


what follows us

by bereft_of_frogs



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Coma, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Horror, Jedi Temple (Star Wars), Mystery, Pre-Canon, Psychological Horror, Spooky, Supernatural Illnesses, mysterious supernatural creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29549949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bereft_of_frogs/pseuds/bereft_of_frogs
Summary: “- I heard she’s dying.”Obi-Wan's ears catch the words from the group of initiates. Intrigued, he leans a bit closer to the gossiping group.“Dying?”“I heard she collapsed and there was blood coming out of her nose and her eyes and her ears-”“There was not!"Far away, a ship on a scientific mission crashes under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind a final message bearing warning and a bizarre theory of what caused the crash. The Jedi are asked to investigate and send a young but talented knight to the wreckage, to determine the veracity of the messenger's claims. She finds more than any of them bargained for.And she brings something back with her.
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A Note on Canon: Star Wars canon is pure chaos and so am I. Generally, I take the films only as ‘hard canon’ and pilfer the rest for shiny baubles and hidden gems. The version of the universe that I use while writing is one I’ve been building in my own head for about 20 years, so I would ask you to please forgive the indiscriminate blending of ‘canon’ and Legends, and all the little fanons and headcanons and personal characterizations I’ve acquired throughout the years. I do my best to keep track of what is and isn’t canon (sort of) but mistakes and intentional ignoring of canon details I find er, inconvenient, abound. Nonetheless, happy reading! <3
> 
> [Also this is my first Star Wars fic! Please forgive things I'm still figuring out about writing for this fandom/time period/etc XD.]

_Prologue_

The Council chamber is deathly silent as the holographic messenger finishes its missive and disappears. The blue light washing over them vanishes and the seated members exchange grave looks.

“That was…disturbing.”

“A grim tale, this messenger has brought us.”

“And now we must decide whether or not we should intervene,” Mace Windu sits back in his seat, frowning at the place where the woman’s image had disappeared. “The Republic has already put their crash investigation team on stand-by, ready to depart at a moment’s notice. They’re holding for us, to see if we think that a Jedi should make an initial assessment before the investigators move in.”

“I do believe we should have a presence in this investigation. The Republic will likely send crash investigators in either case, we should assess the situation before they move in. Whatever happened to the crew could pose a serious risk to the crash investigators. If their story is true, that is.”

“Doubt their story, do you?”

“No, Master Yoda, I do not doubt what she saw and how she understood it. Her interpretation on the other hand…”

“I think we should treat it as true until we prove otherwise,” Adi Gallia says as she folds her arms.

“Agreed. Such things of the mind are not to be trifled with. Even if she was mistaken about what was going on, it’s too big a risk to not take seriously.”

“If it’s true, it could be a particularly dangerous mission. For those that are unprepared especially. I do advise we should send someone as an advance party before the Republic sends their investigators.”

“Though we are uniquely qualified for such a mission, it also may be particularly dangerous for Jedi, if they are not prepared. We’ll have to choose well. Someone with strong psychic abilities, good shields, experience.”

“No one with an apprentice,” Mace says. “Even leaving the padawan at the Temple would represent a risk to the child, through their connection, if what the message says turns out to be true.”

“Agreed.”

“Kitri Otte. She’s young, but she’s always had a particular affinity for such things. There was that incident during her apprenticeship…”

“I remember. She conducted herself extremely well.”

“Assisted in teaching the young ones mental shielding, she often has.”

“We are in accordance? We send Knight Otte to investigate this threat?” Mace looks to his colleagues. Each master assents in turn. “So be it.”

Yoda nods. “Summon Kitri, I will.”

_The hike up the mountain to the crashed ship is long, hot, and sticky. Kitri sets aside her physical discomfort and uses the walk as a continuance of her meditation practice, set to the rhythm of her footfalls on the path. She began these centering exercises when she left Coruscant late in the afternoon the day the Council received the distress signal. It’s easier to fall deeper into the meditative pattern now that she’s on the ground. She doesn’t have to concentrate on flying, for one. For another, living things surround her now. It makes it easier to connect to the currents of the Force. She can feel keenly now the wound in the Force created by the crashed ship._

_She stops at a flat part of the path, reaching out to get a greater sense of the crash site. There is one greater debris field, and one smaller, more concentrated impact point. An escape pod._

_All of it is soaked with dark, fraying emotions. Pain. Fear. Grief. The emotional echoes come together to resonate in the Force - a discordant hum miring the forest. At this distance, she cannot feel anything in particular, but she can already tell that something terrible had happened aboard that ship. Of course, she knew the basics already. She had watched the holographic image half a dozen times on her way to the system, memorizing as much as she could. But to feel the weight of it makes it all the more real. It makes it seem even more grave than the message had implied._

_Kitri restarts her hike up, falling easily back into the meditative trance._

_She finds the escape pod halfway up the slope. The trees surrounding it are broken and scorched. It left a long streak in the soil as it impacted. But the pod itself is whole, the door left open. There’s a trail of footsteps up the mountain. A survivor. She crouches next to the trail. Several survivors, two at the very least. The footprints had been nearly obscured by the drag of some heavy object._

_She has just reached out to touch the side of the pod’s hull when a black smear of death streaks across the Force. A violent, sudden death. She stumbles back, bracing herself on the trunk of a tree to weather the blow. It echoes against older death centered around the pod, emanating from the larger wreck of the ship. It soaks into everything in this forest._

_Kitri calms herself, taking a deep breath, and turns towards the path up the mountain, where the footprints lead away from the escape pod._

_There is no fear. There is no death. There is the Force._

_She focuses on a quiet mantra, letting her mind clear._

_There is no warning, no whisper of another being anywhere near her._

_A voice whispers in her ear, “Hello.”_

* * *

_Chapter 1_

_Two Weeks Later._

“They’ll be looking for answers.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi sighs. “Yes, master.”

“And what are you going to tell them?”

Obi-Wan doesn’t answer. His master turns to look at him, with a stern expression on his face, but humor sparkling in his eyes and in the Force. “I will tell them that the item was a casualty of a dangerous and difficult diplomatic mission.”

“Not that you accidentally lit your cloak on fire while attempting to spy upon secret meetings?”

“See? A dangerous diplomatic-”

“Young one, it is still a mystery to me how fire became involved.”

“The lamp wasn’t as sturdy as I thought it was. And they _did_ find that the electrical system in the party headquarters was sorely out of date because they’d diverted funds from upgrades. It probably wasn’t my fault that the lamp started sparking like that. And besides, I was rather distracted capturing a recording of the executives planning to assassinate the union leaders to notice it had started to smolder.”

Qui-Gon laughs. “Still, you might have put it out before it became so unsalvageable. You know how the quartermasters feel about wasting our resources. You go through enough linens as it is, growing as you are.”

“That’s hardly my fault,” Obi-Wan mutters.

They land their ship and emerge out into the busy Temple hangar.

“I’ll report to the council. You complete our equipment check-in - go see about this cloak.” He hands over the bundle of ruined fabric.

“Yes, master.” Obi-Wan tucks it under his arm. It still smells vaguely like smoke and burnt wool. He starts off towards the supply offices.

“You should suggest they turn it into rags,” Qui-Gon calls after him.

“I don’t think that will help my case, master.”

Qui-Gon’s amusement follows him towards his doom.

Obi-Wan checks their equipment in with the hangar staff, then heads towards the supply rooms, already preparing for the lecture about taking care of Yes, it _is_ the third time this year that he’s returned to the Temple in need of a new cloak, but the first was caused by a sudden growth spurt on a posting that had drawn on and the second was due to bloodstains from a rather grievous injury, so he doesn’t think he should _really_ be held at fault. He knows much better than to actually say any of this to the quartermaster, because he can also quite clearly imagine the lecture from Qui-Gon about accepting fault and releasing pride, and he would like to avoid that as well.

He does work on listening to the Qui-Gon voice lecturing at the back of his mind about pride as he approaches the desk with his head held high, pushing past a group of initiates.

The quartermaster on duty looks down at him, with a raised eyebrow. “Kenobi. Of _course_. What happened this time?”

“There was a…small fire.”

He holds up the ruined mess of his cloak. “Small?”

Obi-Wan nods, trying to look as innocent as possible. “Master Jinn suggested…suggested it might go to use as rags?”

The master lets it drop from his hands, into a pile on the desk. He doesn’t dignify Obi-Wan’s suggestion with a response. Just turns on his heel and heads into the stacks of linens, leaving Obi-Wan waiting.

“- I heard she’s _dying_.”

His ears catch the words from the group of initiates. Intrigued, he leans a bit closer to the gossiping group.

“Dying?”

“ _I_ heard she collapsed and there was blood coming out of her nose and her eyes and her ears-”

“There was not! I heard some of the masters talking about it and they said no such thing!”

“She _did_ start screaming in the great hall, right in the middle of everything-”

“No, but she did see-”

“Younglings! You should all be back in class by now.” The initiates are shooed away by a junior knight, ushered back towards the dormitories. When they’re on their way, he turns back to his companion. “The gossip is running _rampant_.”

“Can you blame them? It’s not like we’re setting a good example. Everyone’s on edge.”

“I’m sure the healers will figure it out eventually. I’m sure she’s going to be fine-”

“But it has been _days_ , and no one has a proper diagnosis. It’s…unusual, to say the least.”

“Just because something is a mystery doesn’t mean it’s a crisis. And it’s unbecoming, for a whole class of initiates to be so consumed by their anxieties-”

“Come on, you know you were just like them when we were young. And it’s understandable. What happened to Kitri-”

“Here you go, padawan.” The supply master places a folded cloak before him, distracting him from the quiet conversation. “And _do_ be careful with this one.”

“Yes, master. I will, I promise.”

“I suppose you’ve returned for the yearly exams. So it should last you at least until those are over.”

“Yes, master. I’m sure it will. Thank you.” Obi-Wan smiles innocently, gathers the new cloak up from the desk, and hurries off. Curiosity about what he had overheard follows him all the way back. He’s sure the mystery will reveal itself soon enough.

Qui-Gon moves through the halls, growing more and more certain that something is wrong the closer he gets to the Council. There is a simmering, quiet tension running through most of the people he passes on his way. A nervous energy charging throughout the Temple, in a way he has rarely experienced in his long years.

When Qui-Gon enters the chamber, the mood only confirms his suspicions that something is off in the Temple. They are strained, minds very obviously elsewhere as he gives them the summary of their mission to stabilize a burgeoning workers’ movement besieged by saboteurs and spies.

“And here?” he asks after a pause, knowing they will know what he’s asking. He’s not sure if he expects an answer.

The Council shifts, some of the masters exchanging looks. “So you’ve heard,” Adi says.

He shakes his head. “Truthfully, I’ve heard nothing. But there is…obvious tension. Unusual.”

“Nothing to be concerned with.” Mace sighs. “Though I’m sure there are whispers.”

“We’re trying to stamp them out.”

“A young knight, ill after a mission she is,” Yoda fills in.

“She fainted in the Great Hall, in sight of many. Rumors spread like wildfire,” Ki-Adi-Mundi says. “As they always do.”

“But you are worried as well?”

“It’s a mysterious illness,” Mace acquiesces. “It evades all our diagnostic skills. She collapsed a few days after returning from a mission and we can’t quite figure out why.”

“Yet.”

“Yes. _Yet_.” Yoda taps his stick on the floor. “Working on it, our best are.”

“Of course. I hope they will be able to learn the cause and she makes a speedy recovery. I’ll be sure to assuage any rumors that reach my ears.”

Mace nods. “Good. Thank you. We’ve no further assignment for you right now. You’ll have a couple of weeks leave while your padawan prepares for the exams, but if anything comes up that we need your assistance on-”

“You know where to find me.”

It doesn’t quite fully explain the black cloud hanging low. They know he feels it, but Mace meets his eyes and he knows it’s folly to press them further. Qui-Gon bows and takes his leave.

The rumor mill among the masters had always been just as productive as among the initiates and padawans, if not more. Qui-Gon is sure he’ll get the truth of this mysterious illness eventually.

Neither master nor apprentice mentions anything about the rumors they’d both heard as they settle back into their quarters. There’s enough to do to return to the patterns of life in the Temple, to conclude their last mission and prepare for the coming weeks. The time spent journeying and the sleepless nights working catch up to them. They retire to bed early, worn out by their adventures.

Obi-Wan sleeps peacefully for an hour, then wakes with a start. On edge, he waits a moment for the danger but feels nothing. His room is quiet. There are no signs that a single thing is amiss. The Temple feels like naught but stillness, and peace, as it always does.

But then again…

Obi-Wan remembers the overheard conversation. The vibrating strain in the Force, emanating off even the older Jedi that he had passed.

He dismisses the mood as simple gossip and the lingering memory of the recent more perilous times on their mission, where nights were often interrupted by riots and fights. He curls back up under his blankets and tries to go back to sleep.

The rest of the night goes poorly. It takes a long time to go back to sleep, and when he does he has strange nightmares, though he can barely recall them when he wakes.

It’s not the way he wants to spend his first night back, before a long stretch of stressful exam preparations. Obi-Wan rises, rubs the sleep from his eyes, and puts it from his mind as he turns his thoughts towards academic matters.

Qui-Gon sleeps no better than his padawan. More attuned to the flows of the Living Force than his young apprentice by years of experience and practice, he doesn’t mistake the energy for stress or poor dreams. He can feel the strain, the dark edge in the Force.

He gives up before dawn and goes out to the balcony to watch the sunrise over Coruscant. The city is bustling as ever, even at this early hour. He watches as the darkness fades, as the artificial lights are slowly obliterated by the light of the sun.

Then he sits at the table with a mug of _very_ strong tea and waits for Obi-Wan to wake. It doesn’t take long before his apprentice emerges, looking bleary-eyed but fully dressed.

“You’re up early. Off to the first review session?”

Obi-Wan nods. “There’s going to be an extra hour afterward for those who’ve been absent for most of the last academic sessions. So I won’t be back until after midday, at least.” He turns towards the door, stifling a yawn.

“Just a moment, padawan,” Qui-Gon stops him before he can leave. “Sit. How did you sleep?”

“Oh.” Obi-Wan’s brow furrows slightly. “Fine,” he says. “I suppose it was a little strange, to be back after so many weeks away.”

Qui-Gon hums. “I felt it too. And perhaps…the rumors swirling around did not help.” Obi-Wan looks a little guilty and sits at the table. Qui-Gon pours him a cup of tea and slides it across the table. “I didn’t say that to make any accusations.” He grins. “The Temple gossip rings can be a valuable source of information, just as we’d use any other sort of…unconventional networks in the course of our duties.”

“I heard some of the initiates talking about an illness. I meant to mention it to you, master, but I forgot,” Obi-Wan admits. He explains the confusing conversation he’d overheard. “And it seems like everyone is on edge. The initiates had some very strange ideas about what happened. The knights seemed to dismiss them, but they were stressed too. Everyone seems strained.”

“Of course. I spoke to the council when I was making our report. They mentioned that someone had fallen ill after a mission. Unfortunate, but nothing to worry about. Though I’m sure the rumors and the tension will remain for a few days, especially among the younglings. I remember it well from when I was young. Stories take on a life of their own in the dormitories. I’m sure the excitement will dissipate in a few days. Though If you hear anything further, let me know.”

“Of course. And you’ll do the same?” Qui-Gon just smiles back, making no response. “So that’s a no.”

“If I judge it appropriate. And not distracting from your _true_ mission this week. _Studying.”_

“Yes, master.”

“You’d best hurry if you want to make it on time.”

Obi-Wan gathers up his things and rushes off. Qui-Gon pours himself another cup of tea.

\- - -

Despite the unsteady quality of their first night back at the Temple, the two settle into a fairly normal routine over the course of the next couple of days. They very nearly forget about the strange circumstances of their return.

Elsewhere is not so fortunate.

It started in the creche, with a series of restless nights.

Restless nights were not particularly unusual in the creche or even the dormitories for older initiates for that matter. Throwing a bunch of Force-sensitive, untrained children together was a recipe for tension and shared nightmares. Periods of disturbances happened sometimes, when one child caught onto a frightening thought and riled up all the others.

But not like this. Babies cried through the night, no matter how long they were held and soothed. Older children had nightmares that spread around the dormitories in waves like the flu. The younglings wake screaming and sobbing, telling stories of horrible visions of things no child should have any exposure to.

The creche-minders had barely slept in three days, leaving everyone feeling strained and on edge, even more than they already were. And things were getting worse. They had to report this to the Council.

“Master Windu?”

The young Jedi startles him out of his thoughts. He turns back to her. “My apologies. Thank you for your report. We’ll be sure to assign some of the senior padawans to watch after the younglings this afternoon so you all may get some rest.”

“Thank you, master.” She bows and departs. Mace sighs heavily. A darkness had begun to settle in around the Temple, like a fog creeping in. He had felt it stronger and stronger the last few days. He knows many others have been feeling it as well, not just the younglings suffering from nightmares.

He sends a message to Depa, asking her to recruit some reinforcements for the creche, then goes to the healing halls.

The senior healer assigned to the case, Master Votaly, meets him at the door.

“Has there been any change?”

He shakes his head. “None. But she isn’t deteriorating, which is good.”

“Nor is she getting better.”

“No,” the healer admits. “And it is concerning that we can not find any cause. I dislike not being able to even identify the problem.”

They enter Kitri Otte’s room. She lies on the bed, her chest rising and falling evenly. It’s almost as if she were simply asleep instead of in a deep coma. There is not a mark on her, save a small bruise on her cheek. No signs that anything is wrong except for the fact that she will not wake.

“Every diagnostic test I could think of,” Votaly says. “Blood tests, brainwaves, cardiac systems. Ones that are out of date, ones developed by the university. I’ve searched nine planets’ testing procedure databases, nothing has been useful. I can find no anomaly.”

“Except this darkness. You can feel it too, can’t you?”

“Yes. I can. So…no _physical_ anomaly.”

A dark energy hangs around her, like a heavy, laden cloud. It feels like death, and decay, and cold emptiness. Now that he’s beside her, Mace is sure. This energy is the same as the one he’s felt growing in all corners of the Temple over the last few days. The tension can no longer be written off as hypersensitive children overreacting to strange rumors and a few bad dreams.

“You’ve had no luck reaching her mind.”

“None. I still cannot change her state from this coma to a proper healing trance. Master,” Votaly sighs. “Her mission to the wreck of the _Arctus VII_. It must be the cause, no?”

“But how? She reported that while there _was_ something sinister in the wreckage and the mind of the survivor she encountered, it perished when he did. She felt no trace of it in the Force once she left the wreck behind, and claimed that she checked several times and felt herself truly free of it. She was very experienced for her age in these types of matters. I trusted her judgment. And she showed no signs of this, not even when she appeared before the Council last week to give her final report. Even we sensed nothing.”

“But even we are not infallible. We can still make mistakes, miss things.” Votaly shakes his head. “I like the thought of something evading our senses even less than you do, but it is quickly becoming the only possibility. That she perhaps did bring something back with her, something we cannot detect.”

“But what? That’s the question.” Mace sighs wearily. “The creches are reporting disturbances.”

“Disturbances?”

“Restless nights. Younglings who cannot be soothed. Shared nightmares in the dormitories. Nothing completely out of the ordinary yet, but it’s all more intense than usual. I came here from a meeting with one of the creche masters; they’re worn out. They’ve never struggled this badly before.”

Votaly leans against the counter. “So you think this could be some type of psychic disturbance? One that’s spreading?”

“It seems the most logical conclusion.”

The healer is not listening. “Spreading…or getting stronger,” he muses as he stares into empty space before his eyes.

That sends a chill down Mace’s spine. It’s a worrying thought, that something could be growing under their noses, here of all places. “I will consult with the Council further. We’ll start putting together a team to investigate. I’d like to keep the number of people working on this low. I don’t want to expose more people to this than we have to, until we know precisely how this is being spread.”

Votaly nods. “I’ve taken on the bulk of it myself already.”

“Good. Try to reduce the hours of the younger members of the medical core. I’m concerned about the effect this might be having on those less experienced. If it _is_ some kind of psychic disturbance, it may affect the young and inexperienced more than anyone else.”

Mace takes another moment in the quiet of the sickroom, then goes to continue his search for answers.

_It’s the exam stress_ , Obi-Wan tells himself. It’s just the pressure to perform well on the comprehensive examinations that has caused the last two nights of bizarre dreams and interrupted sleep. The first couple of days after their return to the Temple passed by in a haze of review sessions and study groups with the other padawans, but his sleep was still just as poor as the first night. Obi-Wan specifically stayed up later than usual studying, hoping to dream of nothing but navigational calculations and philosophical proofs.

It hadn’t quite worked. The dreams were even worse on the third night. He dreamed of awful past missions, past failures. He woke frequently, drenched in sweat with his heart pounding.

 _It’s stress,_ he thinks as he sneaks into an unused practice room. _It’s stress among the padawans, and those foolish rumors among the initiates, that’s all._ He runs through drills, over and over again, though he has long since perfected the ones that will be on the exam.

When he completes the kata for the dozenth time, he turns to start it again and stops when he realizes Qui-Gon is leaning against the back wall, watching him.

“It’s getting late, young one,” his master says softly. “I do believe you have that one down. It’s nearly bedtime.”

Obi-Wan realizes something concerning; he’s afraid of going to sleep. He’s been lingering here, practicing things he’d already mastered, to avoid going to bed.

Though he says nothing, his master picks up on his line of thought. “Still having nightmares?”

Obi-Wan nods. “It’s stress, I’m sure. I’m sure it will pass.” Qui-Gon doesn’t say anything for a moment, studying him with a strange look on his face. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” he finally says with a faint smile. “Go wash up. Get some rest.”

The next morning, after yet another restless night, his padawan seen off to another study session, Qui-Gon goes to find someone who can provide some answers to his myriad of questions.

They’d been growing in the last few days as the strange tension present on their arrival morphed into a shadowy miasma of fear and gloom in the Force. He knows from quiet conversations that Obi-Wan is not the only padawan who has been plagued by uneasy nights, though most are still blaming it on cramming for the exams.

He finds the object of his search in the library. Tahl is holed up in a cubicle, looking like she’d been there for some time. She barely greets him as he sits down across from her.

“Something is going on,” he says after a few minutes, watching a group of initiates from across the room. “The Council is disturbed.”

“Don’t try me, Qui.”

He turns back to Tahl, feigning innocence. “I don’t know what you mean.”

She looks up from her datapad. “You know full well that something’s going on. You’re just bothered that the Council doesn’t want to consult you on the matter. And you’re bored.”

“I’m not bored.”

“You’re facing down the longest stretch of time bound to the Temple all year, with naught to do but drill your padawan on engineering formulas and the standard saber katas. Of _course_ you’re bored.”

“And I am not right to be bothered, that something is going on in my home without my knowledge? Should I not want to help?”

“It’s dangerous.” She drops her voice lower. “They don’t want anyone with an apprentice looking into this. There’s too much to be exploited there.”

Confirmation. “Ah. I thought as much.”

“Of course you did. See? Clearly, it’s not that they’re snubbing you. No one is being told anything, not until we get more of a handle on things. They’re planning on putting out an announcement later today, a general caution. We’re starting to tie some of the threads together, though the picture remains murky.” Tahl drops her voice lower. “It seems to be some sort of psychic disturbance. Haven’t been able to pin down the cause, but it’s turned the dormitories to chaos. And the disturbances are starting to spread.”

“I’ve noticed. We all have. Growing stronger over the last two days.”

She shuts off the pad and stands. “Don’t tell them I said anything to you. And don’t do anything, I mean it. Trust us to handle the investigation. Just watch out for your padawan and keep your head down.”

“The initiates are starting to say it’s a ghost.”

Tahl laughs. “I hadn’t heard that one. Well. It’s probably not a ghost.” She starts to walk away and then pauses and turns back. “ _Probably_.”

The announcement does indeed come, a few hours after he and Tahl parted ways in the library. A message sent out. It doesn’t quite contain all the details Qui-Gon wants, but it’s at least more information than he had earlier.

There was more to the tension underlying the Temple’s energy, to the nightmares and strain. The message mentions that Kitri Otte’s last mission before her illness had been to investigate a tragedy aboard a crashed ship and the Council has some reason to believe that her current lasting coma and the cascading disturbances may be related to that mission. May, the Council emphasizes. They cannot prove anything, and they have not dismissed any other explanations. But they do not believe that there is currently any cause for alarm or risk for serious harm. Possibly further disturbed sleep, the worsening of the gloomy haze of unease in the Force, but not likely anything more serious than that. The Council begs patience while they continue the investigations, and tell them to come forward if they have any other information.

The message concludes with a call for volunteers to help in the creche and younger dormitories, as the energy so far seemed to affect the youngest the worst.

After skimming through the message twice, Qui-Gon sits and quietly meditates, trying to find the little bit of serenity underneath the air of stress.

He hears the door open and close, feels the quiet, respectful presence of his padawan. He pulls himself back from the deeper currents of the Force, returning to the present, waking world.

“Come, sit down. How is the studying?”

“Fine. I don’t think I’ll have any problems with most of the courses but…”

“Flight engineering?”

“I just can’t seem to get the mathematics of it,” he sits across from him at the table. “There are a few problems I can’t quite understand. Though I should be able to pass, even if I get those sections wrong.”

“And I’m sure you’ll do fine in the practical portions, after what I saw yesterday evening.”

Obi-Wan’s cheeks color a bit. “I think I’ll pass saber techniques fine. And I should get by well enough on the written.” He tilts his head. “You didn’t want to talk about the exams.”

Qui-Gon smiles. “Perceptive. No. I have every faith that you’ll pass. I wanted to talk to you about your dreams.”

A furrow appears between his eyes. “The stress of the exams, I’m sure. I apologize if they’re disturbing you, I should work on my shielding-”

“No, it’s not that. And I don’t think your dreams are exclusively caused by stress. Do you remember the rumors of a young knight’s illness, when we returned a few days ago?” Qui-Gon hands over the Council’s message and watches as Obi-Wan reads it. The furrow between his brow deepens and he starts fiddling absentmindedly with the end of his braid.

“I don’t understand,” he says when he finishes reading the message.

“None of us do yet. But it does seem that the rumors we heard on our arrival are based in something other than just youthful gossip.”

Obi-Wan frowns and looks away. “Do you think it’s going to get worse?”

“I don’t know. The Council seems to think it might, but they don’t seem too concerned. Do you feel that things are getting worse?”

“I don’t know. Last night…”

“Tell me.”

“It was more clear. The first few nights were just…off. But the dreams are getting more vivid. More memorable. Some are the usual, others seem to come from nowhere. It’s strange.” Obi-Wan studies the table very intently, seemingly embarrassed at revealing the extent of how this was affecting him.

“I’m sure this will work itself out,” Qui-Gon reassures his apprentice. “No mystery can survive so many Jedi throwing their full powers of reason at it. And they’re just dreams. They can’t hurt you.”

The moment the words are out of his mouth, Obi-Wan’s face falls. Through their bond, he can feel an _increase_ in apprehension, rather than a lessening. With a whisper of premonition. “I’m not so sure that’s true.”

“It will be okay,” Qui-Gon says gently. Though now he is perhaps slightly less sure.

A sense of impending doom hangs low over their quarters as they prepare dinner and go through their evening routines.

Qui-Gon checks on Obi-Wan twice before retiring to bed, unable to shake a sense of missing something. But he can detect no peril. He leaves his door slightly ajar and a light burning in the kitchen and settles in for what’s sure to be a restless night.

It would turn out to be far more than just another restless night.

Obi-Wan wakes up in his bed, curled in a ball around the text he’d been studying before he fell asleep. The sky is still dark beyond his window, the lights from the towers are blurred through the glass. Obi-Wan squints at it and realizes it’s because the window is coated in flowing water. It pours down from the skies, a monsoon the likes of which is _never_ seen on Coruscant. He’s seen rainstorms like this in their travels across the galaxy, but never here, not with the climate regulation system. Perhaps it’s malfunctioning. Such things weren’t unheard of, but it’s rather surprising that it would fail to this extent in the capital region.

Obi-Wan rubs his tired eyes and picks his notes back up. He’s so tired. He should really give up and go back to sleep, but he was having some dark dream that he can’t remember and doesn’t want to return to.

That’s when he hears it. A trickle of water. Not coming from the windows, but the door. He turns. Coming up from under his door is a steady stream of water. It bubbles up underneath like a fountain. Alarmed, he rises to investigate the source of the flooding.

The door doesn’t open. He tries the handle again, but nothing. He tries the Force, but it is like trying to move a mountain. The door doesn’t budge, the attempt to move it breaking against the immovable door.

The water is rising above his bare feet now, splattering up to soak the hem of his pants. Obi-Wan forces himself to keep calm, keep his head, and reaches out again with the Force to try the door. Still, nothing, like it is sealed against him. With panic rising, he reaches out for the bond with his master, to call for help-

-and gets a feeling in his head like he missed a step instead of the feeling of connection. Nothing. No connection, no steady answering voice. Just nothingness, like there was nothing there.

The water is rising faster than before, filling the small room quicker than he’d anticipated. It must be coming in from somewhere else, but he can’t see where. There shouldn’t be anywhere else it can come in, but it must be. He tries to block the gap with his cloak but it doesn’t stop it.

He thinks then about going to the window, but it’s already too late. The pouring water has blocked the portion that can be opened and he has nothing to break the glass with, and he wouldn’t be able to get the momentum up anyways. Even if he were, it’s a long, sheer drop down to the ground. The Force still stubbornly remains out of his grip.

The water keeps rising and rising, faster now. Obi-Wan can do nothing but rise with it, treading water as it fills the room until there’s nowhere for him to go and only a thin stripe of air left. Obi-Wan is trapped, gasping for the last bits of air left in the room. The water closes over his head, cutting off the last of his air. He has only the oxygen left in his lungs and when that’s spent he’s going to drown in freezing cold water, in the darkness.

 _Padawan_ , the voice cuts through the murky swirling waters. _Padawan!_ The voice grows more insistent, more demanding. He knows he should answer the voice, he knows he should somehow make his way towards it but he can’t tell which way to go. The water is dark and cold, his lungs are burning, and spots are appearing in his vision. A last, thrashing attempt to swim, to reach out to the voice, to get out of this tomb before his lungs give out-

“Obi-Wan!”

His eyes open. He sucks in a desperate breath of air. Qui-Gon is standing above him, hands gripping his arms painfully tight. His bedroom coalesces around him, completely dry, not a single item out of place. The water wasn’t real. It had all been just another nightmare.

But his lungs still burn, like he’d been holding his breath. He can still feel the water lapping at his face. He’s freezing cold, shivering like he’d been truly submerged in the icy depths.

“What’s going on? I was…” Horror now, floods into him. The dream had felt so real, it had been so vivid, and yet…it was just a dream. He had been facing his death, he had been just about to drown and it was just a product of his own mind.

“It’s all right,” Qui-Gon murmurs softly. He gently guides him out of the bedroom and into the common room, maneuvers him towards a chair, and pushes him down into it.

“Master…I don’t…I should…”

“You should do nothing but sit a moment and breathe,” Qui-Gon says gently. He keeps a warm hand on his shoulder and Obi-Wan doesn’t want to admit how much he needs the contact. His master patiently waits for him to calm a bit more before questioning him, rubbing warmth into his arms.

“What happened?” he asks again.

“A nightmare,” Qui-Gon says gently, reassuring, Though he’s frowning, and there’s a line in his brow that only appears when he’s really concerned about something.

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “It’s never been like that. Not even since…this all started. Never. It felt real.”

“I believe that it felt real.” Qui-Gon smiles, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Believe me, little one, I know.” Obi-Wan glances up, confused. “I was woken by your panic. Several minutes ago. I know well that you thought it was real.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No apology needed, of course. I’m just glad you’re all right. Can you explain to me what you saw?”

Obi-Wan shudders. “The room was filling with water - I was going to drown. It was…cold.” Logically, he knows that his clothes are dry - they were never soaked in the first place. But still, he shivers as if he had just been pulled from a freezing sea. Wordlessly, Qui-Gon rises and fetches an extra blanket, draping it over his shoulders. He rubs some warmth back into his arms.

Obi-Wan starts to relax a bit as the nightmare loosens its hold over him. He’s still shivering a bit, but he’s starting to feel a bit foolish, that he had been so undone by something that wasn’t real. But if it wasn’t real why is he so cold? Why do his lungs burn like he’s been holding his breath? He leans closer to Qui-Gon’s light and warmth, struggling to release the last lingering fears into the Force. There’s a great deal of tension tonight, not just coming from himself. Qui-Gon is stressed too, despite his attempts to project calm and reassurance. And it’s coming from outside their doors. Like the anxiety that has been simmering for days has boiled over.

There comes out of nowhere a piercing stab of unfamiliar panic not his own, then the sound of running footsteps outside their door. From farther away, a scream. Obi-Wan tenses again, jumping at the faraway sound.

Qui-Gon rises, looking towards the door. “Stay right here,” he orders. “I’ll be right back.”

Obi-Wan nods. Qui-Gon tucks the blanket closer around his shoulders, gives his short braid an affectionate tug, then sweeps out the door, shrugging his cloak on as he goes. The edge of his cloak disappears around the corner and then Obi-Wan is alone.

He shivers again, and buries his face into the warm, familiar blanket, and tries to banish his fears into the Force.

It is very, very quiet.

Qui-Gon still feels a bit shaken, as he leaves his apprentice safely in their quarters and moves swiftly into the hallway, moving towards the sound of raised voices.

He meets Tahl where the hall opens out onto the stairs. Her face is drawn, cloak rumpled and hanging awkwardly from her shoulders. She tries to shake out it out. “Did you feel that? Stars, it was like an earthquake. This is getting out of control.”

“It’s getting worse, to be sure.” Qui-Gon is still shaking off the shock of his own rude awakening.

She gives him a look. “You two okay?”

Qui-Gon shakes his head slightly. “Another nightmare. This one was strong. It took nearly a full minute to rouse him.” He happens to glance down. There is a small trail of blood splatters on the smooth floors.

A small crowd has gathered. There are raised voices. The two masters hang back as healers slip through the parting onlookers. Qui-Gon gets a glimpse beyond - a young knight, blood running down his face. It drips from his nose, runs in rivulets from a nasty puncture wound in his arm. There’s a knife gripped tight in his hand, nothing more than a kitchen utensil, but harmful enough.

“I didn’t mean…I didn’t know…I saw-” He drops the knife, letting it clatter over the tile. “A dream…it couldn’t have been-”

“It’s all right. Come with me now, yes? We’ll see about those cuts.”

Two healers bundle him into their arms and help him to stand.

Tahl lets out a long breath. “I was expecting worse, to be honest, with how it felt.” Now that the crisis is over, the small crowd disperses, breaking off into smaller groups and heading back towards their quarters.

“The strength of the feeling in the Force, I’m not surprised by.” He gives her the short version of Obi-Wan’s nightmare, explaining as much as he understood. “It certainly felt like he believed he was in mortal danger, though he was standing before me and I knew he was unharmed. Afterward, he was chilled, cold to the touch like he’d been submerged in freezing water. I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Hm, it’s like…it’s almost like his body reacted to the circumstances of the dream.” She taps a finger on her chin. “And I think I’ve heard of someone…a senior padawan who nearly died in similar circumstances last month, on a mission. It was a collapsing underwater station, I believe.”

“Someone else’s nightmare?”

“It’s possible…it seems to make the most sense. Not that any of this makes any sense.” She glances back towards where they had discovered the disturbance. “The dreams get worse, become vivid and traceable to others' memories, jump to waking, then become vivid hallucinations. That at least appears to be the pattern, given what I’ve gathered from Kitri’s reports and what’s been happening in the initiate dormitories.”

“Could this just be a collective hysteria?” Qui-Gon asks. “Among the young ones, accidentally shared thoughts, traumas, could be escalating things. Everyone was on edge after Kitri Otte’s mysterious ailment, the rumors that have shrouded the situation.”

She shakes her head. “If it were just the younglings or even just the younger padawans, I would maybe see your point. But full-grown Jedi, falling for such hysteria?”

“Fear is a powerful thing. But you are right. I cannot see how this could spread so virulently through our ranks. And why it is happening now, when even during our darkest days no such troubles plagued us. Sometimes these past days, I’ve felt like it was like an enemy invader, battering itself at our walls, chipping away at the rock.”

Tahl nods. “But one that we cannot track. The Temple Guards have searched every inch of the grounds, then the Council conducted their own secondary check. There is an energy around Otte but it appears to be inert.” She shakes her head. “I’ll do more research. There has to be something, some precedent for a malicious aberrance this insidious, this difficult to track. There _must_ be.”

“If there is, I’m sure you’ll find it.”

“I’ll do my best. I’m first going to go see if I can help in the dormitories. I’m sure they’re going to be feeling it tonight.”

He bids her goodnight and enters the apartment as she heads off towards the creche.

Obi-Wan is, of course, still awake. He sits with his knees pulled up to his chest, head resting on folded arms. When Qui-Gon enters, he looks up. “What’s going on?”

Qui-Gon doesn’t know where to start. He gathers his thoughts as he sits beside his apprentice on the couch. “I don’t know.”

Obi-Wan’s brows draw together. “You don’t know?”

“No. Not yet.”

A flicker of fear, traveling into the Force through still shattered shields. Obi-Wan’s carefully built mental shielding was all but destroyed by this final shattering blow, and Qui-Gon can’t help but wonder if that’s what this phantom wants.

 _‘Phantom,’_ he scolds himself. _Now you sound like a gossiping initiate. You have no idea what this is, it is certainly not a ghost._

Qui-Gon is not used to being so in the dark. The Force has never failed him like this, never been so obscured. He doesn’t care for the feeling.

But before he can assist in any investigations into the cause, he has to care for his young charge. He refocuses, concentrating on projecting a sense of calm and steadiness.

“We do not know _yet_ , padawan. But we _will_ find out and we _will_ stop it. For now, you need to know that whatever you see, it is not real. It won’t hurt you. It only has the power to trick you, to frighten you.”

Obi-Wan sits back, looking thoughtful. His hand comes to touch the center of his chest. “I’m still not sure that’s true, master,” he says in a small voice.

Qui-Gon thinks of the scene in the hallway, the blood running over the tile floor, how it all had unfolded mere hours after he had made the same hollow assurance, and carefully releases his own unease into the Force before his apprentice can sense it.

“Trust me, young one,” he says gently. “Everything will be all right.”

They don’t go back to sleep for several hours. They meditate together, reinforcing Obi-Wan’s weakened mental shields. It’s a challenge. The whole Temple is in a subdued uproar; outwardly silent and dark but in the Force the collective unease of so many people. He has no doubt that many other masters are struggling to get their students under control tonight, and the creche-masters have an even harder job calming their charges. He does not envy them.

Once Obi-Wan’s shielding his thoughts and emotions to Qui-Gon’s satisfaction, they run through a few saber drills and some of the equations for the navigational exam. By the time they’ve finished, Obi-Wan is drooping and it’s well past midnight. Qui-Gon sits with him until he’s sure he’s peacefully asleep, with no signs of further nightmares. The exercises have done their job; distracting him from the uneasiness in the air and exhausted him so he falls quickly into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Qui-Gon sits a minute longer, to be sure, a watchful sentinel against further disturbances. When all seems calm, he retires to his own room and finally finds a couple of hours of blissfully uninterrupted rest.

He wakes to a message summoning all in-resident masters to an emergency council meeting in the late afternoon. The tone of the message is clipped, formal, but he can read between the lines.

The Council is very concerned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve honestly been super nervous to actually dive into this fandom, so go easy on me. XD Okay, I’ve actually been sort of terrified. This is one of the like…old slumbering fandoms for me, though I’ve really been an on-and-off lurker up until now. Just in my little corner, building my own version of fanon, picking and choosing various characters and plotlines and concepts from Legends/EU as I will, etc, etc. I’m finally organized enough to actually finish things (as I wasn’t when I was writing my first stabs at Star Wars fanfiction in middle school - which are all lost now, probably for the better.)
> 
> This fic was partially inspired by the cold open to the TV show _Nightflyers_ , based on the George RR Martin novella of the same name. The series didn’t _actually_ unfold in the way I thought it was going to, but the fic inspiration was sparked by that little teaser before I knew where the series was going lol. 
> 
> Next chapter will be posted tomorrow, somewhere around afternoon/early evening, and the third on Sunday at around the same time. 
> 
> Comments/kudos/shares/frogs always appreciated! You can also find me on [tumblr @bereft-of-frogs](https://bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com/). Until tomorrow! :-)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crisis worsens. Even with everyone aware that something was brought back from the crash site, they remain no closer to finding a solution.

_Chapter 2  
_

The masters file into the largest auditorium in the Temple, quietly speaking amongst themselves. The Council is already seated upon the dais. Mace stands, clearly the appointed representative of the Council. Tahl slides into the seat next to Qui-Gon, towards the front.

“How were the dormitories?”

“Troubled,” she replies. “I didn’t get to sleep until dawn. But I’m at least better off than the creche masters. They’ve been barely getting any rest since this all started.”

They are called to order by Master Windu rising. He glances once back at Yoda, who nods once.

“I’m sure you all already have an idea of why we called you here. I can’t imagine it has escaped your notice that the nightmares and strange auras we’ve been dealing with for the better part of the week have begun worsening. Yesterday we said that this posed no physical threat - we were evidently wrong. Whatever is going on, whatever energy is causing these nightmares and visions, is growing stronger. And we still cannot identify it.”

Mace pauses, looking out at the gathered masters. “So the Council has decided to temporarily isolate the Temple. To close our doors and allow no one in, and no one out.” A wave of surprise, wary concern, rolls through the assembly, though they remain outwardly composed.

“Such a thing has not been done in…decades. Centuries, perhaps…”

Mace nods. “Not since the last outbreak of Iridian Plague. But this is a pressing situation. All Jedi in the field are being instructed to hold their positions, to shelter with allies until we can get a handle on what’s going on. Until further notice, all currently present in-Temple are instructed to remain within the walls, and we are closing our doors to all business.”

“We can only assume that whatever has taken root here is dangerous and potentially spreading. We’ve seen how quickly it’s broken through our ranks. I’m sure most of you are aware of the disturbance last night. And another padawan was admitted to the healing halls early this morning, under similar circumstances.”

“But _how_ is it spreading?” Comes a voice from high in the rows of seats.

“We think it might be…” Votaly pauses, frowning, as he gathers his thoughts. “…wearing us down. It’s subtle, quiet, able to work under our detection. This is why it’s being felt most keenly by the youngest, by the ones least trained. But eventually…”

“The nightmares, the hallucinations, and eventually…”

“It becomes too much. It overtakes them. It blows through their shields and suddenly, they aren’t just dreaming anymore. It becomes something more. That’s why it’s taken over the dormitories so quickly. They don’t have the same skills as padawans or knights, who have stronger shields and more practice in weathering psychic threats. But even they cannot hold off forever. I expect to find more and more experiencing intense visions over the next few days, more injuries - and for the nightmares to spread even to masters before long.” Votaly’s words hang heavy over them. Up until now, Qui-Gon has only felt the echoes of it. His sleep was disturbed by the waves of unease in the Force, and his padawan’s own nightmares. But he knows well that that might change.

“But you say you cannot identify a cause?” Someone asks. “You call it an ‘it’? What could this disturbance _be?”_

Mace frowns. “Kitri said she felt…a presence.”

\- - -

_Kitri whips around, but no one is there. Nothing but the silence. Something has slipped into her mind under her shields, making her hear the word, so clearly as if someone was standing just behind her. And yet nothing. No further whisper, not even an echo in the Force._

_She steels herself and turns back towards the path. She tries to keep a balance on shielding herself and reaching out to survey the area. A few smaller creatures, mostly moving downhill. Some disturbances, flickers of anxiety from creatures scuttling in the bushes. And one lone humanoid figure, a little ways up the mountain, close to the bleeding wound in the landscape. The wreckage._

_The man is stacking firewood when she emerges from the trees. He freezes when he sees her, staring with wide, shocked eyes. The man’s clothes are torn and dotted with stains. His hair and beard are long and wild. He glances down, takes in her lightsaber, her robes, and then shakes his head._

_“You shouldn’t have come,” he says. “We told you not to come.”_

_“That’s not what the woman said. The one who sent the message.”_

_He shakes his head again. “You should have just let us rot here. She was a fool if she called you for help. Or a vindictive bitch. I told her to warn people away.”_

_“The Republic will want answers. The university will want answers. They’ll have sent a crash investigation team, there will be questions about what became of your mission.”_

_“They’re not going to like what answers they find.” He sits hard down on the log with a sigh. “But I won’t stop you. Go. Take a look to report back to the Senate. It’s too late anyway. It’s too late for all of us. We’re all fucked.”_

_The fire crackles between them. The Force buzzes around them. In it, she can feel the undercurrents of death, or despair._

_“Are you going to do it then? The ship’s up there-” He nods towards the path. “See what you can find.”_

_Kitri doesn’t move. “What did you do with the bodies of the rest of the crew?”_

_“Buried them. In the clearing back there. ‘Guess mine will just rot.”_

_“The crash investigation team customarily-”_

_He shakes his head. “There can’t be an investigation. Go back to Coruscant and tell them to let us decay here.”_

_“Can you tell me what happened at least first? How did the ship crash?”_

_He sighs. “Sit down. I’ll tell you…best I can understand it at least.” Kitri sits on a stump, across the fire. “It started just…just with a few rough nights. We’ve all had them, especially on long missions. We were meant to be collecting samples from uninhabited planets for the head of botany at the university. Could have requested to come back after each collection, take a break, get a chance to see our families - could have told the professor no, it was too long a stint to be floating out in the void…but instead, we said ‘fine.’ We’d all been there before, pulled long jobs. It wears on you, but you get used to it. Couple months in, we’d just collected these botanical samples from a deserted moon, pretty far from any civilization. Our first night in space on our way to the next destination, we all had a rough night. Captain woke screaming. Next night was worse, then the next until none of us were really sleeping. That’s when we started seeing ghosts.”_

_“Ghosts?” Kitri says, raising her eyebrow._

_“You telling me you don’t believe in ghosts, Jedi?”_

_“I’m not saying that at all. I’ve seen many things I might call a ghost.”_

_“What did she tell you in the message? The one that was supposed to be a warning?”_

_“The message said that she believed…something had invaded your minds. Taken them over. She said nothing specific about what you saw…but that she believed there was some sort of psychic disturbance plaguing your ship. That’s how we came into the picture. There was concern that it might affect any rescuers or the crash investigators, so the Jedi were called to make a preliminary report before the Republic arrives.”_

_“Hm. You still shouldn’t have come.” He pokes at the fire with a long stick. Another log catches. “Anyway. Ghosts. The dead come to life. Captain had the worst of them. He’d had a rather nefarious past, as it turns out. Had some demons in the closet. He started seeing old comrades he’d left to die back when he was running goods less legitimate than botanical samples. And the crazy part is…we all started seeing them too. We could describe them, precisely. When Sadi - the botanist - told him about the grey kerchief this one ghost was wearing, he lost his mind. Smashed half the commissary to bits before we could stop him. And then there were others. Everyone has people who died, who they left behind. And they all came back to haunt us._

_“Slowly, the nightmares got worse. Seeing the ghosts in the halls that screamed at us, accused us of our worst sins. Captain became convinced that…that hyperspace itself was haunted. Wouldn’t listen to reason. I was the navigator. I begged him to see how insane he was being. I showed him all the charts, all the distances. I told him we would be trapped. But nothing got through to him. And well. I was having the nightmares too. You try to argue about fuel expenditures and rations with a madman when you spend every night dreaming of…” He cuts off, swallows. “So we started just flying, no hyperspace. Have you ever been facing a journey with no hyperspace? It’s bleak. You’re just floating through nothing. The stars never get any closer. You have no idea when your journey will end. You’re just out there, completely alone. Then people started fucking dying. Killing themselves. Each other. Attack each other in the throes of hallucinations, then they’d wake up and start screaming. There was something in our heads. A voice. It laughed when people died. It liked it._

_“We were operating on a skeleton crew. Captain finally offed himself. We tried to get us into hyperspace, to another inhabited planet, but it was no use. And I realized…even if we did get to civilization, we’d just be bringing this…this fucking ghost with us. The others agreed, though I guess…Sadi not so much, if she sent a distress signal behind our backs. So we decided…to let go.”_

_“So you let yourselves crash.”_

_He nods. “There was already damage. We just didn’t bother to fix it. Jumped here, once we confirmed there weren’t any sentient civilizations. Last couple crew members died in the cockpit on impact. Sadi and I left in the escape pod, so we could cover our trails. Can’t believe she sent that message. It was supposed to be location scrambled, warning people away. I don’t know why she’d summon help.” Kitri feels something dark and bitter coming from the man. Rueful. Almost like…he wishes he could kill her again._

_The thought hits with sudden clarity. Kitri deepens her breath, her awareness. Danger coalesces around them. Kitri knows for sure now that this man killed the botanist - Sadi._

_“If you ask me -” He almost smiles, though it’s half a grimace. The firelight casts flickering shadows on his face. The sun has started to sink below the trees, staining the sky orange. “We picked up something on that moon. Something came aboard with us, not just plants. And it wants nothing but death.”_

_Kitri believes him. She can feel something, just at the edge of her comprehension. Its shape is menacing. “So why are you still here?”_

_“I’m a coward. I’m just waiting to drum up the courage to off myself like Sadi did just before you arrived.”_

_She knows it for a lie. That must have been the death that marred the Force when she was at the escape pod. It was no suicide. Kitri tucks her hands into her sleeves and says nothing, watching, keeping calm._

_“I was going to hide some of the wreckage, then put my blaster in my mouth. But the thing is…I was hoping to see my little girl one last time. She died in a transporter accident, only ten years old.” This was true, Kitri determined. She could detect no lie. “I thought if I waited until nightfall I’d get to see her one last time. Tell her I was sorry again that I couldn’t fix it. Then you showed up. I hope you’ve heard enough. There’s no other explanation I can give. I just hope you’re strong enough not to give into it. Guess you will be. Jedi are supposed to be better than us lowly mortals anyways.”_

_“I’d like to examine the wreckage. Just briefly. So I can be sure to make a full report to the Council and the Republic.”_

_He nods and pokes at the fire. Kitri rises and heads to the wreckage._

_The ship is largely intact. The atmosphere on this planet is thin at these altitudes. It didn’t have time to burn up and break apart like it would on most other planets. The onboard fire suppressants seem to have been in proper working order. At a few places, there are scorch marks, drying foam. Kitri carefully steps inside. There are streaks of blood on the floor. She lets her shields lower, just a bit, to feel what happened here._

_Hate. Pain. Anger. Desperation. Longing and sadness. The very air of the crashed ship is heavy with these emotions. There’s grief and bitter relief. Kitri stands in the silence. Because there’s something more. Something empty and hungry, as cold as the Void._

_A breath on the back of her neck. She swirls, hand going to her saber hilt, but there is nothing behind her but empty air._

_Kitri loosens her grip on her saber. “Who is there?” She calls into the silence._

_“No one,” the voice says in her ear._

_This time she holds steadier. “What are you?”_

_“Nothing,” the voice answers. “Your mind. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you came.”_

_“Get out,” she says, but again, the moment she speaks, there’s nothing there._

_Her heart is beating rather quickly. She notes it like she was apart from her body, feeling suddenly very far away. Fear. She is afraid._

_Breathe in. The Force. Breathe out. She acknowledges her fear and lets it go, as she has been well trained to do. This time it feels like the fear sinks like a stone into the quagmire of misery in this ship, rather than being wiped clean as it normally is. A droplet of sweat rolls down the back of her neck. She carefully picks back through the wreckage, to emerge into the mountainside._

_Perhaps it would be better for this all to languish. The navigator was right. Not about killing himself, but about leaving the wreckage behind, not allowing a Republic investigation. She has enough information to make a thorough report to the Council, to recommend this area be sealed off until the Jedi can study it further. The psychic energy generated by whatever overtook the crew was overpowering here. The Force was burdened by some cold darkness. A crash investigation team would possibly be at risk. She needs to convince the navigator at least to return to Coruscant with her. Even if he believes himself to be tainted, she is sure that their healers may help him recover his mind. She turns towards the fire._

_“Too late,” the mysterious voice says in her head with a gleeful peal of laughter._

_“You’re too late,” the navigator shouts as he lunges towards her, holding a knife in his hands. “You’re too late to save yourself.” They speak as one voice and Kitri sees now how the darkness has embedded itself within him, how he was being filled with the hate, how it ate him up from within._

_She dodges his first blow, ducking under his arm. He moves inhumanly fast, enhanced, it seems with the power of whatever creature gripped his mind._

_Her lightsaber blade springs forth, casting a glimmering sheen of ice blue light onto the blade as he swings it again towards her face and she prepares to defend-_

\- - -

“…a presence?”

Mace nods. “One that drove the crew of the _Arctus VII_ mad. Made them see things that were not there, turned them against each other. She eventually concluded that it was centered around the navigator. She had thought it was destroyed when he was. She detected no anomalies, felt no disturbances, until after she returned to the Temple.”

“How could she have missed something like this?”

“We had taken precautions,” Adi Galla says. “Kitri is strong, particularly skilled in matters of the mind. She is young, yes, but quite experienced. She did her job well, listened to the promptings of the Force. When we last spoke to her, before her return, there was no indication that anything was amiss. It was not until she collapsed several days after her arrival back here that we understood something was wrong.”

“And after it all started here…”

“Yes. Clearly, whatever happened to Kitri, the wreck of the _Arctus VII_ …has begun to gravely affect us all. So we must close off the Temple, to protect those outside these walls and contain whatever it is until we can find it…and defeat it.”

“Masters, what of the Senate?”

“They are being informed now that the Jedi are facing an internal crisis and will be unable to assist them at our full capacity for the time being.”

“Will they accept that? They’ve been pushing us lately, demanding more and more that we submit to their supervision. They may not accept-”

“Accept it, they must,” Yoda finally speaks, tapping his stick on the floor. “Take further risks to appease their desire for oversight, I will not.”

“Not to mention other Force-sensitives beings and species across the galaxy. We have no idea how this works, if it’s somehow centered here, or if it’s…if it’s contagious, if it could affect others. We have a responsibility to safeguard the galaxy, not expose it to further danger. The Senate will have to accept that.” Mace looks around the room. “Any other questions?”

“Not to draw attention away from the graveness of this crisis and to less essential matters, but what of the exam period? The junior padawans were meant to sit their yearly reviews this week.”

“Yes. We have been considering suspending the exams, but we’re unsure if that’s the best course of action.”

“The exams might provide a direction, a sense of stability,” Qui-Gon supplies. “If they have a purpose, can focus on something other than their anxieties, it might help keep them centered.”

“But we can hardly ask them to perform at their bests, Qui-Gon,” Adi counters. “They’re already distracted, they’re frightened. It’s _already_ affecting them, adding on the pressure to pass exams on top of everything else…it could make things worse.”

“For now, I think it’s best to keep the exams on. We can reevaluate as things progress. And we’ll offer an automatic retesting period. If any of you feel that your apprentices will be better served by deferring, we will cede to your judgment. There will be no penalties. The most important thing is the safety and health of the younglings.” Mace looks out over the assembly. “For obvious reasons, we’d like to keep the number of people working on solving the problem small. Trust that we will find the source of this disturbance, and eliminate it. Focus on shielding yourselves, preparing for whatever this thing might try to throw at us. Come to me with any other questions or concerns.” And the meeting is adjourned.

Qui-Gon hangs back, waiting for Mace.

“Don’t start,” he says as he crosses his path.

“I wasn’t going to,” Qui-Gon says. “I was merely going to offer my assistance.”

“No. I said we’d keep our task force small for a reason. We have plenty of eyes on this, we want everyone else to focus on holding themselves together. Until we know what has invaded our senses, and how to defeat it, that’s our best defense.”

“Perhaps I’m just trying to show my support.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Jinn.”

“You wound me with your accusations.” They turn towards the dining halls. “But in all seriousness, I hope you’re well.

“Well enough,” he admits. “We’re putting our all into this problem, and getting nowhere. It seems like a fire spreading out of our control at times. There are been disturbances before, of course, but never something this pervasive. And elusive.”

“I suggested to Tahl last night that it might be a collective hysteria, though she rightly pointed out that would be unlikely to affect so many, so quickly.”

Mace shakes his head. “Perhaps it’s being amplified by hysteria, but we’ve heard what happened aboard the _Arctus VII._ Despite her best efforts, _something_ managed to follow her back. We just need to find it.”

They pause at a break in the corridor.

“It seems I have chosen the wrong time to return from the field,” Qui-Gon says with a half-grin.

“You do seem to have a knack for trouble, Qui-Gon. It’s only fitting that you’d be here now.” Mace sighs. “Terrible timing, this happening just before the yearly testing period. Many who would normally be in the field have returned so their padawans can sit the exams. There likely wouldn’t have been so many of us here, if it had been any other time of the year.”

“If you do need my assistance, you know where to find me. May the Force be will you.”

“With us all.” He heads down the corridor towards the healing halls. Qui-Gon watches him go. There is a great weight on all the Council’s shoulders. They are turned to for answers but have none. But, despite the circumstances, Qui-Gon trusts the Force and trusts that this crisis will pass like all the others.

_Good luck_ , a small voice whispers in his ear. A presence, just the shadow of it, gone before Qui-Gon can reach out to grasp it. It sends a shiver down his spine.

“There is no such thing as luck. There is only the Force,” he says calmly to the empty air, before turning away and continuing down the hall.

The dining hall buzzes with voices. By the time dinner started, word had spread about the general meeting, an unprecedented event in most of the initiates’ experience. The resilience of children allows them to find a frenetic sort of excitement in their predicament, especially with the soothing light of day to chase away their fears.

“I heard all the masters are being summoned because one of them is a traitor. They’re going to root out the cause.”

“Don’t be silly, we _know_ the cause, they’re all going to rally together and-”

“They’re going to-”

“Quiet, now,” one of the minders says mildly as she passes the initiates. They are silent for a second, then explode into frantic whispers again.

The padawans are quieter, for the most part. Most of them have by now enough experience with the things that happen in the darker corners of the galaxy. They’re able to contextualize some of the terrible things they’ve seen in their nightmares. They’re more informed; most masters don’t believe in keeping secrets from their students, since at this stage in their training _everything_ is meant to be a lesson. And they’re hyperaware that a couple of apprentices are missing from their ranks. They can fill in the gaps of what happened.

After a tense dinner with minimal conversation, Obi-Wan clears his plates and slips out of the hall.

To his surprise, he quickly finds his master waiting for him just outside the refectory.

“I thought we’d take a walk in the fountain room,” Qui-Gon says with a faint smile.

Obi-Wan is near vibrating with curiosity. He knows better than to take anything the initiates were gossiping about seriously, but he’s dying to know what went on in the meeting. And the fact that his master had headed him off, led him into the fountain room, meant he wanted to talk. Obi-Wan reminds himself to have patience, knowing that if he pressed, it was less likely that Qui-Gon would answer his questions. So he bides his time and waits as his master gathers his thoughts.

“The Council has decided that it is in everyone’s best interest to temporarily close the Temple.” He explains the bare bones of their conversation.

“And they still don’t understand what it is?”

“No. But rest assured that they’re working very hard on discovering the origin of this energy field. All we must do is concentrate on resisting its influence - whatever it is. It may mean a while longer of disturbed sleep.”

And perhaps another night of a dream so vivid he might drown. Obi-Wan stops in his tracks and forcibly suppresses a shiver. “Did they indicate how much longer?” Perhaps if he phrases it formally he will sound less like a frightened child.

It doesn’t, to his ears or his master’s. Qui-Gon gives his braid a light tug. “It will take as long as it will. Don’t dwell on the future, but focus on the present. We’ll take this crisis one day at a time, just like all others.”

“Yes, master.”

They continue on their turn around the fountain room.

As they head back towards the main corridor, Obi-Wan pauses his steps again. “Are they canceling the exams?”

“Ah. Not technically. Though there will be no penalty for asking to defer. It’s to my discretion.”

“I can do them,” Obi-Wan says quickly. He starts forward again. “I’d rather get them out of the way, anyways. And I think it would be worse if I just had to think about this all day.”

Qui-Gon smiles. “That’s precisely what I thought. Come. We can get in some practice and perhaps wear ourselves out to find a more restful night.”

\- - -

Despite the cautious optimism Qui-Gon felt the night after the general meeting, things do not improve over the next few days. The nightmares worsen, becoming clearer and more specific. The dark air in the Temple chokes them. As if the presence - whatever it is - knows that the Jedi have detected it and begun to mount a defense against them.

The _thing_ is slippery. It is undoubtedly a _thing_. At brief intervals, they can all feel it. A whispered presence in the back of their minds, gone before they can grasp it, or track it. But they search and search, both physically through the Temple and in the eddies of the Force, and they find nothing but their own apprehension reflected back at them. There must be some cause, some origin point, but to everyone’s frustration, it is nigh impossible to trace it.

It is growing stronger, Qui-Gon is certain. By the end of the day following the general assembly, he also knows why Kitri described it in such vague terms as a ‘presence.’ It appears occasionally, just a drifting shadow at the edge of his awareness. A quiet voice, that when he tries to grasp vanishes and leaves him alone, just as it had after the meeting. If he had been anything other than a Jedi, he might have been frightened. It might have driven him mad, like it had the doomed crew. But as a Jedi, he knows he can trust his senses. He could tell the difference between ghosts and hallucinations and a _presence_ , and this thing is unmistakably a presence.

He reports this to the Council, who confirm that many others have perceived the same thing - but still no one has been able to pin it down. It slips away from them, evades all searching, all attempts to even hold it for a moment.

Sleep is equally elusive but unavoidable. Most make use of techniques to put themselves in deep trances instead of the true sleep that will bring vivid nightmares - a temporary measure to preserve sanity at best. It doesn’t provide the same natural rest as true sleep, and the refuge it offers will not last forever, but it works for the time being.

When they do sleep, there are the dreams, growing ever more elaborate and terrifying. The energy spins all their memories into terrifying visions, spreads them around like a bad virus. The second night after the call for the Temple to be closed, more masters are drawn into the nightmares than ever before, proving that even they are not immune to its poisonous influence. Confidence wavers.

But still, they endure. They seek a solution and have faith that eventually the combined skill of the entire Jedi Order will root out this disturbance.

And the presence sinks in its talons.

\- - -

Once, a long, long time ago, when Qui-Gon was still an apprentice, he had been dispatched on a mission to help mediate a succession crisis between two rival noble families. The old line of monarchs had died out, leaving no heirs, and there were two competing claims to the throne.

The will of the people shifted, as it so often does in these cases. Violence broke out, incited by the clan with more wealth, more ability to spread propaganda and cultivate support. Fanned by the powerful and charismatic clan leader - now the presumptive monarch - the mob turned from the town square in search of a way to end the succession crisis and sate their bloodlust.

Their intended victim then had been the young heir of the weaker clan, a boy just a year younger than Qui-Gon himself at the time. Several of his family members were already dead at that point, killed by the mob attempting to tear down the door. Qui-Gon had been left to guard the young man while Dooku went to try and reason with the clan leaders, to get them to call for an end to the violence.

He hadn’t returned in time. The mob had overwhelmed the clan guards. Qui-Gon had fought them back for a time, but he was only a single Jedi facing down a massive, furious horde.

The time between them breaking through and his arrival at the main square is a blur. There’s pain, and blood in his eyes and in his throat, and his saber is gone. He frees himself from their grasps and pushes through the crowd, trying to get to the scaffold where they had dragged their victim. He had felt desperate, drowned by the anger and bloodlust of the crowd.

The dream conjures the details of this memory with horrifying accuracy. With one important alteration: the figure bound and held fast on the scaffold is not the long-ago young clan heir, but instead is his current padawan. Obi-Wan is held on his knees by two of the warriors, a third stands over him, holding a massive scythe. The crowd jeers, shouts, roils with their excitement at the impending death.

Their eyes meet across the crowd. Time slows as Qui-Gon tries to push his way through. The executioner raises his scythe.

Qui-Gon wakes with a jolt, at the moment the blade’s stroke fell. A nightmare. A vivid one, one pulled half from a long-ago true memory, but nothing more than a nightmare still.

He drops automatically to his knees, sinking into the soothing embrace of the Force, steadying himself. It is not easy. He feels just as he did when he was the apprentice he’d been in the dream.

Since this had all started, he had not has such a personal episode. From what he’d gathered, none of the masters had. Felt disturbances, yes, seen echoes of others’ dreams, yes. But nothing quite so invasive. He breathes evenly, seeking the steadiness that normally comes so easily to him. He should report this to the Council.

Padding, uncertain footsteps, a frightened and inquisitive presence.

“Come in, padawan.” Obi-Wan slips hesitantly inside, looking pale in the dim light. “Come sit.” Obi-Wan kneels across from him.

“Master…?”

“I’m all right,” he says gently. “Did you have another nightmare?” Obi-Wan nods. “What did you see?”

Obi-Wan frowns at the floor. “There was…there was a crowd and…a man with…with a scythe standing next to me…”

Qui-Gon opens his eyes. “What?” he says, a little sharper than he intended. He meets Obi-Wan’s wide eyes.

“I saw you from across the crowd. You were struggling to-”

Qui-Gon abruptly stands to pace across the floor. Obi-Wan shrinks from his sudden flare of anger. This dream was no echo across their bond. This was not simply his own memories - they were both there together. Whatever this _thing_ was, it had drawn them deeper into the nightmare than ever before. He had known it was a possibility when Tahl had suggested that Obi-Wan dreaming about the room filling with water had been pulled from another padawan’s memory, but hadn’t really considered how it would feel.

He forces himself back to calm, releasing the feeling of indignation. He had been a fool, to be so caught off guard by his own vulnerability. He should have been more prepared for such a thing to happen, for his own memories to be transmitted to his padawan. It shouldn’t have been so surprising.

“Master-”

“It’s all right,” Qui-Gon says, though he doesn’t feel it. He offers a hesitant smile. “I’m sorry, I was caught off guard.” He takes another steadying breath. “It’s nothing. I’ll make tea.”

Obi-Wan nods and follows without question.

Tahl has not bothered to sleep more than catnaps here and there in several days. She has scoured the archives for any precedence, in between helping the dormitories watch over the restless younglings.

She spies Mace just as the child in her arms slips into a deep, calming trance. She hands the girl over to another attendant and follows the master out.

“I came to see how your search of the archives was going.”

“It’s going. There are of course tales of dark magic, of invasive spirits or dark energy. But so far all were either traced to a specific artifact or the source of the power was found.”

“We searched everything. Her rooms, the ship. She brought nothing back with her but the clothes on her back and her lightsaber. We’ve searched the _entire_ Temple,” Mace says. “There is no center to this. It spreads from nowhere.”

“Not even Kitri herself?”

“The energy is stronger around her. But we have people by her bed around the clock. It never alters or spreads from there. The watchers are not affected any more than others around the Temple. Nothing we do alters it in any way. And so. We still cannot track the source. But we _will_. I have faith that we will root it out.”

“Of course, master,” Tahl says. “As do I.”

She leaves them and starts to go find another task to distract her from sleep. She’d just gotten a transmission from a professor at the university, an upload of some files from the ship’s botanical mission. She’s planning on going through them to see if there may be a clue, though its unlikely. On her way to the library, she bumps into Qui-Gon.

“I was actually coming to find you,” he says. He looks exhausted but offers her a faint smile.

They sit together in the refectory and he explains the substance of his dream, how this presence had even sunk its claws into his mind.

“Perhaps I was just caught off guard.”

“Maybe, but I also understand your concern. While we were aware of the possibility that one of our memories would be used to fuel the nightmare of another, we hadn’t thought about the possibility of _sharing_ the dreams themselves, of trapping Jedi together in a single memory like this. It’s certainly a disturbing thought. From what I can tell, it’s not something that happened aboard the _Arctus VII_. They were all trapped in their own minds and visions. But that might be because we _are_ different. Even under normal circumstances, we’re far more linked together than others.”

“It has been getting stronger.”

“It’s trying harder to get us to break, it seems.” Tahl frowns. “Though I still can’t figure out what it _wants_. Other than to cause misery and drive us all mad with sleep deprivation and terrible visions.”

“Perhaps that is all it wants. Madness, misery. Eventually death. What else did it get out of the _Arctus VII?”_ Qui-Gon sighs. “And you? How have your dreams been?”

“I haven’t gotten enough sleep to dream,” she says with a tired smile.

“I would tell you you should get some rest. But…”

“I’m going to sleep for a week straight, once all this is over.” _Once we figure out a cause. If we can figure out a cause._ She banishes the thought as overwrought pessimism brought on by too little sleep.

“I think we will _all_ follow your lead,” Qui-Gon says.

“The Senate will just have to be patient for a while longer.”

“They can’t be happy about all this.”

“I haven’t heard anything specific but…no I can’t imagine they’re pleased. Both because we’re not telling them why we’ve closed ourselves off, and that they don’t have us at their beck and call. A couple of the Council masters were put in charge of coordinating the dispatching of those already in the field to the most pressing matters, but I’m sure there’s a line of annoyed politicians who’d grown used to having the Jedi to throw at their every problem.”

“Hm, I think it will be good for them to have to wait a little while. Let them sort themselves out for a while.”

“While we - theoretically - sort ourselves out.”

“Exactly.” Qui-Gon smiles. “Which of course, I have every faith we will, eventually.”

“Thank you. I needed that show of enthusiastic confidence.” Tahl leans back in the chair. “Some of the young ones are starting to get…irritable. They don’t like not having something concrete to fight.”

“I can’t blame them. It is difficult, to be trained to act, to fight, and to be able to do nothing but hope that you can remain sane long enough for the creature hunting you to make a mistake. It’s almost as maddening as the nightmares themselves.”

She stands. “I _would_ worry about how long we have left until we’re stark raving mad. But Jedi don’t worry.”

“A solution will present itself.”

“Trust in the Force.”

“And in the meantime,” Qui-Gon says as he rises. “Usual platitudes aside, I will indulge in just a _little_ worry. Just a bit.”

“You don’t have to. We’ll work this out. It will make a mistake. Whatever this is has not tried to take down a Jedi before, clearly. Or else it would have been warned away by reports of our startling tenacity.”

“Very true.”

Tahl says goodbye and leaves the other master. In the hall, she lets her shoulders sag. She rubs the sleep from her eyes as she heads towards the archives and the tales of the botanical expedition.

The next escalation in the presence’s assault is heralded by the sound of shattering glass.

Qui-Gon quickly appears in the doorway.

“Sorry,” Obi-Wan says. His hands are shaking where he starts to pick up the shards of the dropped bowl. “I didn’t mean to drop it.”

“Of course not. Careful, you’ll cut yourself.” Qui-Gon shoos him out of the way and picks up the glass pieces with steadier hands. “What happened?”

Obi-Wan sits back on his heels. He hesitates. To confess what had startled him, what he’d seen, would be to admit that he was not doing well at combatting the slow creep of nightmarish assaults on his mind. He still feels that he should be doing better at shielding himself, despite the fact it seems like no one - save a few of the strongest masters - is completely able to block out the strange assailant from their minds.

Still, _this_ was a new height to the madness. Obi-Wan’s cheeks warm.

“What is it?” Qui-Gon looks tired. There’s a furrow between his brows that never seems to go away now. He’s often distracted, distant. He seems weary and worried, like many of the masters do. That frightens Obi-Wan even more than the nightmares themselves; that the masters seem to be faltering. This will only make things worse but there’s nothing to be done but admit it.

“I dropped it. Because I was startled. By a Lylek.”

Qui-Gon raises an eyebrow.

“I know how it sounds but…I saw it. And then it was gone. There was blood on its teeth.” He twists the end of his braid anxiously over in his fingers. “I know, it sounds like-”

“Like nothing more serious than what others have been experiencing, unfortunately. It’s concerning, but we both knew that such a thing was possible. Waking visions were reported by the wrecked crew, and I believe there have been some strange specters in the dormitories already.”

He relaxes a bit. “I heard that Bant saw a full transporter crashing into the fountains before it disappeared. But other reports say it was just a speeder.”

Qui-Gon offers a small smile. “I’m glad to hear the padawan gossip circles are still up and running. Now, I know they’ve decided to postponed the exams, but I think running through some lightspeed calculations would take your mind off any more Lyleks in the Temple, wouldn’t they?”

Obi-Wan winces but can’t help but agree. Calculations were boring but complicated enough that they would be a good distraction from any further mental intrusions. He holds the largest pieces of the broken dish as Qui-Gon sweeps a hand over the floor and uses the Force to levitate the smallest pieces into the bin, then Obi-Wan goes to find an uncompleted mathematics problem set.

Another day passes. Another dream pulled from horrible memories interrupted by a stab of panic through the Force from the younger occupant of the apartment.

Obi-Wan cannot even catch his breath enough to speak, once Qui-Gon has gotten him to surface from whatever vision he had been lost in. He doesn’t ask what it was, just keeps his hands firm on his shoulders and tries to return him to balance. Tension hangs heavy in the air, like an oppressive cloud. Qui-Gon is reminded of an expedition to a planet with a large tropical region, where the air was so laden with humidity it was hard to breathe. Except where the humidity was oppressively hot on such planets, here it is bitterly cold and pure energy in nature.

“Sorry,” Obi-Wan mumbles again, rubbing his eyes. “I could have sworn…something in the corner. Sorry.”

“It’s all right. It’s not real. You know it’s not real.” He can feel how much his young apprentice is struggling, straining to release his fear and Qui-Gon feels like there is nothing to do to help.

_You could kill the one who started this,_ a thought appears out of nowhere. _That would be a solution, wouldn’t it?_

The thought comes from nowhere, in his own voice. This is no phantom voice, not like the one he has been hearing. The sense of the presence is nowhere nearby. He is forced to face that the thought had been his own.

Qui-Gon cannot stop thinking about that moment, the invasive thought urging him to kill Kitri Otte. He turns it over and over in his mind and finds no logic in it, no possible source. It can only mean that whatever strange energy fueled the dreams had also managed to slip in under his shields, while he was awake, and tempt him with this awful idea, without leaving a trace.

He finds he is not alone in this.

“It’s like…it’s like it _wants_ us to kill her,” Adi Gallia says hesitantly.

They had both sought a quiet refuge on the same balcony overlooking the gardens. When she had arrived and found him there, she almost turned back with an apology but Qui-Gon had stopped her, offered to share the quiet overlook.

“You’ve felt it too, haven’t you? That temptation, that comes from nowhere, to kill her?” Adi turns to him.

He nods.

Adi lets out a long breath, sounding a bit relieved that he’d shared her sentiments. They stand in silence for a minute.

“The crew aboard the _Arctus_. How did they die? Did Kitri learn the details?”

Adi glances at him, setting her jaw. “A few killed themselves. Others killed each other. That's all we know,” she says after a moment. “Even the last survivor of the crash - the navigator. She didn’t see it happen, but she believed he murdered the woman who sent the message, one of the botanists. Then he attacked Kitri as she examined the wreckage. Threw himself off the mountain when she fought him off.”

“It wants us to kill each other, then. Or ourselves. It seems its end is for death, no matter the form.”

“It certainly seems like it.” They watch the sun setting for another minute in silence. The tall buildings in the distance light up with artificial glow in the absence of the sun’s light. “All the things I’ve seen and done,” she says with a sigh. “I do hate it when it comes back here. I haven’t even liked to take missions on Coruscant itself lately.”

“I know what you mean very well.”

She straightens up. “Well. I should head to bed. May the Force be with you, Qui-Gon. Goodnight.”

He nods as she leaves him alone to watch the rest of the sunset. Night sweeps over Coruscant. For most of the capital region, it is just a shift to another form of day - one light by brightly colored artificial lights and reserved for pleasure.

The Temple stands quiet and dark, on the edge of the bustling metropolis.

“Master? May I sleep out here?” The ‘again’ hangs at the end of the sentence. They’ve started keeping the lights burning softly at all times now. Obi-Wan has largely abandoned his small bedroom in favor of the couch.

Qui-Gon nods. “Though I don’t plan on going to bed anytime soon. If you can tolerate me remaining up for a while…”

Obi-Wan looks relieved. At this point this is another part of the ritual - it is in fact the light, and his puttering around in the kitchen that is what his apprentice is looking for. The quiet noise serves as a grounding device and has let him catch a few hours of restful half-sleep before the strange dreams set in.

He brews another strong pot of tea and sits at the table while Obi-Wan drags his blankets into the common room to make something of a nest for himself on the couch. He drops off to sleep almost immediately. Qui-Gon wonders how long he’ll have before he wakes from yet another nightmare.

He can’t tell if that’s the source of his anticipation. He’s felt it growing over the last hour or so. The sense of tension that admittedly been present since they’d returned to the Temple has grown to a fever pitch. Qui-Gon takes a deep breath, reaches out with his senses to see if he can find their slippery foe. There is no sign of the invader and he is forced to confront that he is struggling to find the boundary between his own anxieties and outside influence. This is always the way of the dark. It clouds their senses, makes them unable to rely even on the Force to perceive their surroundings.

He pours another cup of tea. Pulls the datapad with some of the materials Tahl had asked him to take a second look at towards him and settles in for another long night. He doesn’t sleep, though he occasionally rests his eyes.

Despite not intending to sleep at all, when Qui-Gon next opens his eyes, he knows he is in a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this far! Third and final chapter coming tomorrow afternoon. ;-) See you then!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The presence finally reveals itself. A confrontation, and a final stand.

_Chapter 3  
_

Yoda has lived a long, long time. He has been the grandmaster of the Jedi Order for a long time. He has not quite been so vexed by the dark as much as this.

Vexed is the correct word, he determines. The creature that stalks their minds is not so strong or conniving as some of the evil things he has faced in his long life, but it is clever and it is very, very good at hiding.

As across the Temple, Jedi focus on withstanding the assault, he above all is tasked with rooting out the culprit. Finding the invader and casting it out. And for days, it has slithered just at the edge of even their bests’ consciousness. But it will come to an end tonight. Yoda has never been one to place much faith in prophecy. This is not quite prophecy. It feels more like a certainty.

Yoda goes to the healing halls. He dismisses the watcher in Kitri’s room and waits patiently. She continues to sleep, entirely unaware of the energy hanging over her. Yoda cannot sense anything of her in its cloud of darkness. It must be there, buried very, very deep. Buried, and drowned out by a heavy energy of fear and anger.

“Brought something very troublesome back with you, you have,” he says quietly to Kitri, though she is far from being able to hear him.

His vigil is interrupted when Mace sweeps into the room. “You summoned me?”

“At an end, I believe this ordeal is.”

Mace frowns. “How? Nothing we have thrown at this has worked. Even if we can identify it-”

“Running out of time, it is.”

“We can hold out a little longer, we are not so-”

“No. Running out of time, _it_ is. Make a stand, it must.”

“Why? Why after all this time, do you think it would reveal itself?”

Yoda doesn’t quite know. He follows the Force, leading him on a step ahead of his own perception. But before he can answer, he is interrupted. There comes a screaming, echoing through the Force. The feeling like a dark surge of energy is cresting like a wave. Yoda nearly staggers as the feeling is rebounded back a thousand times.

“What was that?” Mace takes a step back into a more ready position.

“The end, believe I. Or, _beginning_ of the end.”

The dark cloud that has hung around Kitri’s comatose form pulses, almost screaming in echo with the sudden wailing across the Force. But it was not screaming. It was _laughing_.

The presence. It all comes clearer. This was his elusive prey. Hiding in plain sight? Impossible. Yoda has been here at least once a day since this crisis started and the presence has never revealed itself so clearly. It has been on the move, and coalesces now, in its final stand.

It gathers itself and flees. Mace doesn’t think twice before running after it in pursuit, following close behind as it rushes into the hall.

Yoda remains behind. “Left, you both have and have not. Curious. Very curious.”

_I have grown much stronger, Master Jedi. My trap has sprung. You cannot resist me anymore._

“Hm. See about that, we will.”

He knows he is dreaming.

When the darkness in his vision clears, Qui-Gon finds himself in another memory. This time, he is on a crippled spaceship. A labyrinthine structure, meant to be bringing refugees to a newly terraformed planet in the outer rim. He had last been on this ship as a young knight, already cultivating a bit of a reputation for an independent streak. This was one of the first failures when he was on his own, and the responsibility for those he couldn’t save had weighed heavy on his shoulders for a long time after.

_This is a dream,_ he tells himself. He knows this, but like the others, it feels horribly real. The smoke from electrical fires burns his nostrils, the heat makes sweat trickle down the back of his neck. Warning alarms sound, so loud that they vibrate in his chest and make his ears ring. Even in the Force, he can feel the same distant panic as he had when the ship and its dying passengers had been real.

Qui-Gon moves forward along the corridor cautiously. All those years ago, he had rushed quickly to the cockpit, only to find the pilots dead and the systems all across the ship in catastrophic failure. He backtracked, managed to help the evacuation of some of the crew from the engine rooms, but couldn’t make his way to the larger passenger compartments. One managed to evacuate themselves in escape pods, but the other compartment was too damaged. It was lost when the reactor cores finally exploded. Hundreds of lives lost to the Void in a split second, and he could do nothing.

Complicating his rescue attempts were the labyrinthine quality of the ship’s design. The corridors wound in puzzling and difficult to navigate spirals. He remembers clearly the mounting frustration and panic at how horribly slowly he would have to move through the failing ship. It had felt like a waking nightmare then, an impossible maze trapping its occupants in death, a futile game that Qui-Gon was doomed to lose. The passengers’ distant panic fed into his own. He barely kept his head enough to help the limited number of the crew he could and get himself to safety.

Now, there is one particular stab of external panic adding to his own apprehension: Obi-Wan, no doubt also trapped somewhere in this death trap, lost and terrified. He tries to send reassurance through the Force and trace his location at the same time. Neither works and his concentration breaks when another explosion rocks the ship; he has to catch himself against the wall.

“This is a dream,” he says aloud this time.

_BUT IT’S MORE THAN THAT,_ a voice answers. _You know it’s more,_ the voice laughs. It’s the same voice he has heard whispering to him for days, but clearer now. _Remember the cold._

“Show yourself,” he commands, half expecting the presence to slip away as it always has.

But it doesn’t. It remains. _You’ll die here,_ that foreign voice says in his head. _You’ll both die here. You know you will - remember how cold your apprentice had felt, after dreaming he was drowning in freezing water? How much toxic air are you breathing? Is he? Wouldn’t it be better to choose death instead of choking to death here? And aren’t you tired? Let it end now._

Qui-Gon nearly laughs. He is exhausted, worn down, but he’s been far more taxing situations in his long years. He’s poured himself out in service of his mission before, sometimes nearly to the brink of death. He can last here a bit longer.

“I don’t think you’ve fully understood the Jedi,” he says. “We are not so willing to lay down and die.”

The presence is stronger than it ever has been before. And angered. Its fury is a red stripe amid the blackness of death surrounding them. Qui-Gon turns towards where the presence is most concentrated. His hand goes to his saber hilt, ready for a confrontation. But then he feels another stab of panic from his apprentice, somewhere deeper in the crippled ship and he turns reflexively back towards it. In the moment of distraction, the entity vanishes, leaving him once again alone in the dream.

Qui-Gon turns his back on where the presence once was, and towards the small call of dread.

He doesn’t know how long he spends searching for a path through the halls. Present mingles with past. Still, he searches for a way through.

Useless, in this labyrinth. He tells himself that none of this can truly harm him, through instinct and memory make him want to dodge falling beams and exploding wires. There’s the sense of a clock running out, as there had been back then.

Instead of continuing to fight it, he gives in. Finds a safe bubble near the bridge, and sits and pushes the presence from his mind forcibly. The ship fades into background noise and he seeks out his apprentice amid the chaos.

In the Force, despite the heavy, contaminated darkness, they make a connection.

Mace chases the creature, following its stain through the deserted halls. It drops down a stairwell leading towards the secure lower levels and so Mace also forgoes the stairs and jumps. He lands with a soft thud at the bottom, where the shadows are deepest. The halls are lit only with soft orange lamps at this hour and he moves cautiously into the passageway with his lightsaber in his hand. The presence is there, just around the bend.

_This is a trap,_ comes the warning from the Force and he stops. Its message is muddled, drowned out by the continuous uproar of fear assaulting his senses.

_THEY ARE ALL IN TRAPS,_ another voice says. It is unmistakably the presence that has been haunting their halls for a week. The one that has been very completely evading him.

Mace can feel it strongly now, hunched in the shadows. “Ah. Finally, we meet. I’ve spent quite a long time looking for you.”

_You have. And you always failed. Even now you have only come here because I have drawn you here._

“Will you show yourself?”

_I am showing myself, Master Jedi. I have no other form but the quiet whisper, the reflection in the darkness._

“And what do you want?”

The darkness does not respond, swirling in the shadows around him. Everything is very, very quiet. “What did you mean when you said they were all in traps?”

_I trapped them. It wasn’t easy. You Jedi are strong. But your strength is also your weakness. Hearing, hearing, hearing, you can hear each other in your heads, you can feel all in your heads. Patience. I had to have patience. Work slow, until I could spring my trap. They are all in the nightmares. Memories. Traumas. Dark places. They will begin to give in. They will begin to die._

“So that’s what you want. Death? A darkness to feed your appetite…your power. You were glutted on the lives you took on the _Arctus_ and thought you might challenge the Jedi.”

_The girl really should have seen it coming. I hid deep in her mind. I waited. Patience paid off. She brought me here._

The darkness echoes with its laughter. Mace activates his lightsaber, turning in a circle. Instead of dispelling the shadows, the violet light reveals how the shadows move, thicken. Still, they take no definitive shape, but this _must_ be the creature that brought down the _Arctus VII_ , that attacked Kitri in the wreckage.

He narrows his eyes. “What are you?”

\- - -

_-the navigator lunges at her again, with the same inhuman yell that had echoed in the Force. Kitri doesn’t know how she could have missed it. Perhaps she’d been shielding herself too well before, at the fire. She’d been guarding against invasion, but it hid a darker truth from her. Only when she released the shields to read the ship did the dark madness possessing the navigator become clear. She dodges his attempt to stab her with the knife in his hand, getting enough distance to activate her lightsaber._

_“Drop your weapon!” she commands, holding her saber across her body in a defensive position. “I do not intend to hurt you.”_

_“It’s too late, it’s always been too damn late! You shouldn’t have come. Now you’re just going to die.”_

_“No, it’s not too late. Drop the knife.” She catches and holds the navigator’s gaze to attempt a compulsion. “You’re going to drop the knife.”_

_His hands shake. Like he’s fighting to follow her command. She takes the opportunity to lunge forward and try to disarm him - he dances back out of her grip._

_“No!” he growls. “You’ll die. You have to die, everyone has to die.” He grips his head with his free hand, like it pains him._

_“Put down the knife. Let’s talk.”_

_“I can’t,” the navigator growls._

_HE WON’T._

_It’s the same voice she had heard whispering in her ear. Louder now, unmistakable as some entity._

_The navigator keeps come towards her. Kitri ducks under his swipe and knocks the knife from his hand. He gets back up. She stops him in his tracks with the Force, hand splayed out in front of her._

_“Who are you?” she asks, speaking not to the navigator, but to the presence hanging heavy around them. The voice that has whispered in her ear since arriving on the planet._

_THE DARKNESS._

_“I fear no Sith-damned darkness,” she responds._

_YOU SHOULD._

_A sudden pain. Boring into her skull. It comes over her fast and overwhelming like something had reached in and struck inside her brain. She cries out, stumbling backward, away from the navigator, losing her grip on the Force. The navigator gets his hands on the knife again, howling as he rushes towards her._

_“I just want to see her, I JUST WANT TO SEE HER!” he screams, filled with the immense strength of someone desperate and filled with adrenaline._

_KILL HIM. SAVE HIM._

_She can’t help what she does next. There is no other option left. As he charges for her again, shrouded in that dark energy that soaked the wreckage, she takes off his arm at the elbow. When still he charges, she plunges the blade into his torso. It emerges from his back. The dark energy, the sense of that strange presence, begins to sputter, to die._

_With a grunt of effort, she pushes the body of the navigator away from her, turning off her lightsaber. He stumbles back on shaking legs, breathing wet and ragged. She watches in horrified fascination, as he keeps his feet. That wound should have killed him. It had at least severed his spine. But still, he moves, he lives, as if fueled by the energy emanated from the presence._

_He lets out a horrible scream, an inhuman and raw sound, then, before she can stop him, he casts himself over the side of the mountain and into the chasm. The last survivor of the Arctus VII dies, falling into the darkness and taking the presence with him._

_Kitri collapses to her knees on the cliffside, breathing heavily. Adrenaline flees in the sudden quiet and peace. She keeps her lightsaber hilt clutched tight in her hands, comforted by the crystal within._

_She stays kneeling there for a long time, waiting for something to happen. Nothing does. She meditates. Spreads her awareness as far as she can, searching. She senses no darkness. Not in the chasm, not in the wreckage of the ship, nor the navigator’s campsite. Not even within herself. Nothing._

_Only when she is convinced that the creature - the presence, she names it, for lack of a better term - is truly gone does she rise from her kneeling position. She considers going to find the body of the navigator to bury it with the others but thinks better of it. The chasm is as good a grave as any._

_It is late at night now but there are two full and glowing moons to light her way down the mountainside, back to her ship. She waits until she is in orbit and still senses nothing to contact the Council and tell them to hold back the Republic investigators._

_When the transmission ends, she examines herself and her psyche again. Disturbed, obviously, by the strange entity that destroyed the crew of the ship. But she is quite certain she senses no trace of it anymore._

_She enters hyperspace and works to begin putting this behind her as she flies towards home._

_Days later, Kitri Otte sees the navigator in the halls of the temple._

_Just standing in the main hall, in the middle all the Jedi walking and chatting. None of them pay him any mind. They don’t stop or react at all. As she watches, a young padawan runs down the hall, straight through him and the only response anyone has is Master Jocasta scolding the child for running._

_She feels it, coming off him. That cold darkness. It should have been left in the chasm. Nothing could have followed her… she had checked, a dozen times. It’s impossible._

_The navigator grins. There’s blood coating his teeth._

_No, she groans to herself, not here._

_“Kitri?” Someone has stopped, placed a hand on her arm. She can’t gather her thoughts, doesn’t dare break eye contact with the phantom to process who it is. “Are you all right?”_

_The navigator smiles, raises his hand - the one she had severed - and waves. The blackness around him reaches out to her, shreds her shields in a moment, and fills up her skull with cold hunger._

_Her eyes roll back in her head and she collapses in a dead faint from which no one will be able to wake her._

\- - -

Obi-Wan had tried very hard not to fall entirely asleep. But he was so tired.

How long had it been since they returned to the Temple? He can barely count the passage of days now. He tries to remember but it slips away from him. Days blur together.

A small, somewhat childish part of him desperately wishes that things had been normal. That they could have returned, he could have finished his exams with the rest of his classmates, then gone on to the next adventure.

He knows that is not very a Jedi thing for him to think. A Jedi must be ready to accept any hardship in their path. This is not an easy life, that much has been drilled into them since early childhood. This is just one of many challenges he will face. But on the other hand, they have also always been taught that the Temple is one of the safest places in the galaxy. It’s not meant to be their battleground, but a refuge, a place of contemplation, for them to return to after their missions into the wider galaxy. To have it be invaded by such a vile presence is an unprecedented turn of events. Such an invasion has not happened in centuries.

So, under the circumstances, he thinks he can forgive himself for not being the perfect Jedi.

He drifts in the currents of his subconscious, half-listening as Qui-Gon makes more tea and drums his fingers against the table as he reads. Random images, quasi-dreams drift in his mind’s eye. One moment he is underwater again, but swimming, not drowning. Then there is a lake of fire; a group of children giggling as they run past him in the gardens; stars spread out over a vast sky and an empty landscape.

The deepest, before he jerks himself back to awareness, is the image of the grand hall, completely empty. He can feel it in his soul, the crushing loneliness of the massive Temple entirely bereft of all life.

It is all punctuated by an awareness that he is laying, wrapped in a blanket, on the familiar couch in his quarters.

Until he’s not.

Until it’s entirely gone and without any warning, he is thrust into what he knows is another dream.

Unlike the gradual submersion of his past dreams, this one comes on him in an instant. One moment he is drifting in the warm light of his quarters at the Temple, the next he is in the midst of a calamity. He’s on a starship. It feels vast. It is also failing. The corridors are pitched at extreme and unnatural angles. Klaxons sound in warning, fires burn somewhere deep inside. Obi-Wan can feel the fear of hundreds of souls, feel pain and death all around him.

The shock of the transition from the quiet peace of the Temple to this calamity is interrupted by a minor explosion close over his head. Sparks shower down on him as he throws up an arm to protect his face. They burn his skin where they get through the defenses of his clothes, little pinpricks of pain that remind him that this is no ordinary dream.

He has to move. He focuses on that purpose, scrambling down the passageway even as the smell of toxic smoke fills his nose. He presses the sleeve of his cloak to his mouth until he finds a relatively clear bit of air, a passage that might be a stateroom. He tucks himself into a corner and takes a deep breath.

“A dream,” Obi-Wan tells himself. “This is just another dream.” He tries to find a center. “Wake up.” He knows better by now. He’s never been able to wake himself up purposefully from these nightmares, even when he was fully aware of the unreality. The ship shudders and his breath catches in his throat. He tries to breathe out his fear, whispering quietly, “It’s just a dream. Like the others. It will end and I will wake up-”

_But will it?_ A voice says. He’s not sure where it comes from. _Will you? Do you really know what would have happened, if your master had not pulled you from the dreaming? It had felt so real, hadn’t it? The water on your skin. As real as the sparks, the fumes in your lungs. Would you have drowned? Would the executioner have taken your head off?_

“No. It’s just a dream.”

_Is it really? How much longer can you last?_

He’s distracted, for better or worse, by another explosion, the overwhelmed electrical systems in the paneling above him finally giving way. He has to move again. The ominous presence and its voice are gone.

From somewhere far away, there’s another familiar presence, one much more steady and comforting. Qui-Gon. Somewhere out there, in this mass of metal and fire. If they can find their way to each other, perhaps they could escape together.

He tries to pick his way through the wreckage towards his master, fear growing as each hallway twists and turns, seemingly leading him further and further away from his objective. The panic grows with each dead end, each corridor that bends in an unexpected way. It’s a maddening maze that he can find no way out of. And between the fear from other passengers on the ship and the dark presence haunting just at the edges of his awareness, he cannot feel the Force well enough for it to help.

A panel gives way under his leg, nearly pitching him into an access passage of sparking wires. A painful shock travels up his leg and he throws himself to the side, rolling out to more stable ground. He lays on his stomach, waiting for the twitches in his leg to stop. He tries to come up with a new plan since his current is clearly not working. The ship disintegrates around him, becoming more a deathtrap with each passing second. The passages grow more and more dangerously impassable. And he has made no progress towards his goal. It is difficult to come up with other options than childishly laying down and giving in to his despair.

_You need to wake up,_ something inside tells him.

The presence, making itself known again, laughs mockingly down at him. _Not doing so well, are you? You need to end it soon._

“I can’t-” he chokes out. “I don’t understand what you want.”

_For you, this is sufficient for now. In my web. I’ll have you soon enough. Soon, you’ll die._

“I won’t,” Obi-Wan says, though he cannot believe it. He rises to his knees, coughing. The smoke thickens again. It burns his lungs, drowning him just as effectively as water would have. The ship shudders again, a louder klaxon warning of the threat to the engines starts to sound. They don’t have much time. And if the voice is to be believed-

He is afraid. He is tired and lost and afraid and the presence is laughing at him.

_Let your fear go, padawan,_ a stronger voice in his head says. _Trust only in the Force._

He can’t trust his eyes. He can’t trust his senses. But he can trust the Force. And so he chooses to let go. He is still afraid, but he understands now. He will not act from his place of fear. He will not let it control him. He will not let it dictate his actions.

Obi-Wan finds his way to a quieter pocket. He leans against the walls and closes his eyes, heart pounding hard in his chest. Fear still courses through his veins, but now so does acceptance.

_This is not real,_ he tells himself. _You are not going to die,_ a voice so clear and bright that it can only come from the Force.

He closes his eyes and stops fighting. An explosion, louder, closer. He reaches out a hand to blow his face from the coming blast-

\- - -

_I drove them mad, I drove them all mad! Just as I’ve wound your people up in their little traps,_ the voice cackles. _This cannot be solved with lightsabers, Master Jedi._

A moment’s hesitation, then Mace lowers his saber, letting the violet light vanish. The room is now only lit by the orange lamps, a glow that barely cuts through the gloom.

“You have overstayed your welcome.”

_Considering I was not invited, I do not see how that is possible. I had no welcome here, so any ground I gained I have taken for myself. A conquest. I **won** it so I deserve it._

“What are you?” Mace asks again.

_I don’t know. I’ve never met something like me. Something from the darkness._

“And what do you want?”

_It is not a matter of what I want. There is nothing I do or do not want._

“Well, if there is nothing you want, you can just leave. You can just leave the girl alone.”

_NO._ The voice laughs. _You’ll have to end her life to banish me._

It is the Force that contradicts the creature’s claim, rejects it for a bitter lie. Mace reaches out to feel the thread of Kitri’s life, far above him. Yoda is with her, facing the same temptation. End her life to save the Temple. But ending her life will save nothing. She ended the navigator’s life and it only fed the creature’s strength. The grandmaster is strong enough to withstand it. Mace thinks a moment more, seeks out the larger networks of psychic connections that bind all Jedi together. He can feel the way the creature is trying to tempt them into ending their own lives, or others’ lives, Kitri’s life…

“Death. You want death. No,” Mace smiles. “You _need_ it. But without a form of your own, you must use others’ bodies to enact your violence. You must take over minds and drive them to insanity, to killing each other or themselves, like the crew. I suppose if you had managed to find your way to a war zone you might have been quite well off. But instead, all you could find was a botanical mission and a lone Jedi Knight. But she brought you back here - a place full of people with extraordinary powers of the mind, deep connections that you thought you could use that to take us all down. You thought this would be a feast for you. I’m going to make sure it’s your tomb.”

_YOU MAY TRY._

“There is no try,” Mace says calmly. The presence grows annoyed.

_There is one way to end it. Do it now._

“No,” Mace says. “No, I think you’re bluffing.”

A moment’s hesitation from the presence. _Does your Force tell you that?_ it asks. _Are you as arrogant as your aged master?_

It’s still too muddled with the collective pain and unfamiliar fear that the darkness is drawing around them to get a clear picture. But Mace has faith that the Force is still guiding him, though he cannot hear it now.

“No one has died,” he says. “Not even Kitri Otte. You need someone to die. That’s what you pushed the crew of the _Arctus_ to - madness and death. I assure you, no one will die here.”

_Your faith in your people is misguided._

Mace smiles. “I don’t think it is. I think you’re finished.”

Kitri’s breath has slowed. Crawled to a faltering, unsteady rise and fall. The presence lingers.

_She is dying anyway,_ the voice whispers. _You can feel how your people suffer. How they slip ever closer to death. Why not sacrifice one to save the rest? Kill her._

“Told you, I have. Kill her, I will not.”

_Someone will eventually. They will see this is the only way to free your home from the nightmare._

“A poor game, you have played. Lost at sabaac, you would have.” Yoda sits in the chair. “A bluff, this clearly is.”

_You would risk all for the sake of the one?_

“No. But innocent lives, the Jedi do not wantonly take. Besides, _need_ this person to die, you do. Very set on this outcome, you are. So. Why should I give you what you want? No. Kill her, I will not.”

It has overextended itself. Yoda feels the shadow flickering, and its anger as, across the Temple, its targets fail to deliver their lives in sacrifice. This is not a spaceship on a wearying extended mission. This is not a crew already on the edge of sanity.

“Hm. Chosen a poor target, you have. Thought you would get a big payoff, hm? With little work? A good strategy to spread your poison, depending on the natural abilities of Force Sensitives would have been. _Would_. Not here. Not among the Jedi. Perhaps elsewhere. Perhaps, if cleverer you were. But failed, you have. Dying, you are.”

It howls, throwing the last bits of its power out to desperately try and save itself. It needs a death, Kitri’s death most of all. In its last throes of life, the entity tries one last time. The temptation blinds the old master for a moment, but his resistance prevails.

It fades as quickly as it came, leaving Yoda entirely alone in the room. It is gone.

Kitri wakes.

Like a wave breaking over a seawall, the shadow crashes over the Temple, in a last gasp of power. And then it shatters into a million, harmless pieces. It fades, leaving behind only a faint, drifting spray. A chilling energy that washes over the Jedi, and leaves them unharmed, though reeling from the sudden relief. It, whatever it had been, is gone. It had spent itself in winding them up into the fever pitch of nightmare and hallucination and madness - but did not account for the endurance of the Jedi. It never got any payoff from its investment. It poured in all its power and got back only dregs of fear and a few injuries. Perhaps it would have gained just enough energy to make a true last stand, to push them over the edge, if just one of them had died. Maybe if someone had died, it would have been enough to cascade the dominoes and lead to their destruction.

But instead, the presence loses. It burns itself out, flickers like a candle flame using up the last bit of oxygen in the room, and is extinguished.

Obi-Wan gasps in a breath as the darkness vanishes, chased away by the softly glowing lamps. The familiar sight of their quarter walls takes the place of the disintegrating ship. The explosion never reaches him; it’s just gone. He slips out of the dream as quickly as he had been sucked in in the first place.

His knees give way in the rush of relief, but he’s caught with a steadying hand on his back.

“Master? It’s gone?”

Qui-Gon nods. “Whatever it was, I do believe it is gone.”

* * *

_Epilogue_

Kitri Otte bounces her leg up and down. She is full of nervous energy that she knows her old master would certainly scold her for, were she here. Though it would pale in comparison to the scolding she was in for.

It had taken a few days for her to recover fully and be told the full scope of the crisis.

_I tormented the entire Temple with my negligence,_ she thinks to herself, still horrified. _I nearly got my entire community killed just like the crew of the Arctus VII. I forced us to stop fulfilling Senate requests - there will certainly be political ramifications. And all my fault._

She takes a deep breath and grasps onto the fabric of her robes, holding on until it hurts her hands.

Votaly emerges from the Council chamber. “They’re ready for you. And remember, any lingering symptoms-”

“I will come straight to you, master.”

“Good girl. May the Force be with you.”

Kitri bows to the healer and turns towards her fate.

The Council chamber is almost empty. The only two representatives are Master Yoda, sitting calmly in his seat, and Mace Windu standing by the window. She’s surprised. She thought she’d be facing official censure before the full Council but instead finds only the two masters in the chamber. That still does not make her feel much better.

“I must ask for your forgiveness,” she says before they can start. “I should have noticed the psychic disturbance. I should have been more diligent in rooting out the cause of the _Arctus VII_ ’s disaster. I deeply apologize for my errors.”

“Apologize for your own illness? Hm, very curious.” Yoda taps his stick. “Apologize for bringing back common infections, no one does.”

“Master, I…I don’t understand.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Mace says, looking rather amused. “It evaded all of our senses. For many days. You did do your due diligence, Otte. There was nothing else to be done. We are sorry you were so affected and it took us so long to help you. But while you were the unfortunate conduit for the creature, it was not your fault.”

“Oh.” She pauses, still absorbing that she is somehow not in trouble for bringing such calamity back to the Temple. “What _was_ it, masters? I still do not understand where it came from, or what it wanted.”

“Neither do we.”

“A frustrating puzzle, this will be for some time, I feel. Give a detailed account to the archives, you must.”

“Our best guess is that it was something from the Void. Something that the botanical researchers picked up on their long journey. All we know of what it wanted…was death. It sustained itself on the death of others. The crew first, then it hoped for a larger feast here. It thought that our connection to each others’ minds in the Force would cause a cascading effect - which it did for a while. It accelerated the spread of its infectious nightmares - but it did not plan for our resilience. We lasted longer than it budgeted its energy for and so it starved.” Mace sighs. “Unfortunately - or fortunately, as it may be - it left no trace behind to be examined. We could trace the _Arctus VII_ ’s steps - but I sense that we would not be able to find its origins, now that it has perished.”

“Unique, we hope it was.”

“It alluded to me that it was the only one of its kind it has ever encountered. The wild space is vast, and it is possible there are other such creatures out there. But there are any number of dark things in this galaxy. Perhaps a future generation of Jedi will be able to unlock the puzzle. For now, focus on recovering your strength.” Mace smiles gently. “If you still feel the need for some form of penance, I know the creche is looking for new recruits. They’re still experiencing some lingering uneasiness and could use the assistance.”

Spending time with the younglings is far from a punishment. Kitri has always liked children. “I am here to serve,” she says neutrally.

“I will inform them of your assignment to the creche,” Mace tells her. “You can report there this afternoon.”

She bows low. “Thank you.”

Kitri leaves them, feeling lighter than she has since she set off to investigate the ruins of the _Arctus VII_.

Most of the Temple sleeps on and off for days once the source of their nightmares is gone. But they are Jedi and they are resilient and well-practiced in putting traumatizing things behind them, so by week’s end, things have begun to return to normal.

A week and a half after the presence vanished for good, the exam period for junior padawans ends. The grades are posted two days later and Obi-Wan Kenobi breathes a sigh of relief, then goes to find his master.

He catches up with Qui-Gon on the ground floor.

“Passed! Even the advanced mathematics.”

Qui-Gon smiles. “I had no doubt. Extraordinary circumstances notwithstanding.”

“Well, I do think they graded a bit easily, because of that.” They walk out into the gardens, Obi-Wan turning a question over in his mind. One he has mulled over since the night the creature died and they learned the full extent of what Kitri had brought back with her.

Qui-Gon notices his contemplation and raises an eyebrow; a plain signal to ‘get on with it already.

“I just had a question…about what happened.”

“That much was obvious, padawan.”

“It’s just…” He gathers his thoughts. “We normally spend most of the year traveling.”

“Very true.”

“We could…bring something back with us. Like this. I suppose I’m wondering how we’re meant to prevent something like this from happening again.”

Qui-Gon tilts his head. “Well. This was rather…unprecedented. It is unlikely we will bring back something _quite_ so dangerous.” They stop and sit on a bench under flowering trees. “It is true that we always bring things back with us. Memories, regrets. We eventually accept them and let them go, but we still return with some things trailing. Sometimes dangerous artifacts, to be handled by the archives. It is a fact of our way of life, of the choice the Jedi make to offer our services across the galaxy. There are other orders of Force-sensitive beings who remain in closed communities to protect themselves. But we choose to place ourselves in danger, so we can use our skills to aid people. There will always be a chance that we awaken something sinister.”

“So there is no way to eliminate the risk.”

“No. Not unless we wall ourselves off.”

“Though it does seem like most things we bring back, we can handle.”

“Very true. There are, of course, some things that might put up a bit of a fight, but we are well prepared for most dangers. Now, to focus on the present, where our attention should lie.” Qui-Gon rises. “I’ve heard some new rumors - that the Council has begun to work through the backlog of requests from the Senate.

Obi-Wan smiles. “Looking forward to it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope y’all enjoyed this! If you did, I do have some other in-progress _Star Wars_ fics. If you didn’t, well…I’m going to write them anyways, because I have a target audience of exactly one (me, it me) and I will keep making the fic I want to see in the world. ;-) 
> 
> Kudos/comments/shares/frogs always appreciated! <3 You can also come find me on tumblr @bereft-of-frogs. Thanks for reading and I hope you all


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